Nightbird
by Lady Stella Black
Summary: On a Hogsmeade trip in her 6th year, Hermione finds Bellatrix Lestrange wounded with parts of her memory missing. The trio keep her in the room of requirement while she heals and Hermione soon realizes that without the memories of her trauma, Bellatrix, her first real intellectual match, has a chance to start over. Meanwhile, Voldemort searches for his most faithful. Bellamione.
1. Chapter 1: Not Ready For the Winter

This is a sister story to my older story, Raw, and it has the same initial premise but has Hermione as the member of the trio who falls in love with Bellatrix, rather than Harry and of course it goes off in a completely different direction given that. I got the idea last June during Pride and I've been wanting to write my first wlw story for awhile and bellamione makes my bi girl heart happy. Hope you enjoy!

**Prologue: **

_March 1997_

Hermione was trying to pay attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but it was no use. She smelled Bellatrix on her hair.

Snape swooped around the room going on about nonverbal knockback jinxes, but Hermione couldn't listen. She knew Snape was an accomplished Legilimens, so she couldn't think about her too much or she'd give their secret away...but whenever she tried to think about anyone else she'd ever been interested in...Viktor, Tonks, Ron...or anyone she might reasonably be involved with like Cormac, Ginny, or even Harry...literally anyone whose face she could implant over _hers _whenever Snape stared too intently in her direction...it was no use. The lover of her daydreams had curly black hair, russet brown eyes and lips she couldn't stay away from...

She was already spending nights with her whenever she could get on "watch duty"-easy, since Harry and Ron had Quidditch practice. Sometimes she could sneak off and see her on a free period if Ron was with Lavender and Harry thought she was doing homework, but she feared they were starting to get suspicious.

The bell rang signaling the end of class and Hermione was ready.

Ron had already been snatched up by Lavender Brown and she half heard Harry ask her if she wanted to use their break to get started on Snape's homework since McGonagall was bound to give them loads. She knew he was just trying to be kind, since he couldn't have possibly wanted to start his homework so quickly. She knew he thought she was still into Ron and upset about Lavender and was therefore trying to distract her. She almost felt badly about turning down his well-intentioned offer until she remembered who was waiting for her upstairs.

"Look, Hermione, why don't I meet you in the library? I've left my Transfiguration stuff upstairs in the dormitory and I want to get it now so I don't have to run off right before class," he said and Hermione felt her heart skip a beat, not having expected it to be this easy to give him the slip. She could already taste Bella on her tongue.

"I'd say I'd go up with you, but I think I just saw some...rather unsavory company...head up that way, so do you mind if I go on ahead to the library?" she asked just a little too quickly.

"Fine, perfect," Harry called over his shoulder and Hermione was already thinking up a list of excuses to give him later as he sped off to her shortcut passage to the seventh floor.

She didn't know how she'd gotten in so deep with Voldemort's best lieutenant, and she knew that at some point soon they were going to get caught and their world was going to come crashing down...but maybe it was for the best.

Still, she'd never felt this way about anyone before. Not even Ron. It scared her, of course, but she'd also never felt more excited.

**Chapter 1: Not Ready For the Winter**

_~5 months earlier~_

_19 October._

_~Hermione drummed her fingers on the table, her eyes flickering between Ron and Madam Rosmerta over at the bar. The moment she saw Harry drain the last drops in his bottle of firewhiskey she said, "Shall we call it a day and go back to school, then?"~_

Once they'd bundled back into their cloaks, scarves and gloves, they reluctantly stepped out of the warm pub and out into the howling October sleet. Hermione pulled her jacket and scarf more tightly around her, alreading feeling the slush soaking into her boots and numbing at the edges of her toes.

"Bloody miserable, should've just stayed up at school," she heard Ron mutter behind her.

"Wasn't miserable when you were looking at Madam Rosmerta in that short skirt, was it?" said Hermione with a loud scoff. She stormed ahead, plowing a trail of fresh footprints through the thin coating of snow. She knew she was being petty, descending to the same level of immaturity as Ron, but sometimes she couldn't help herself-especially when she was already frustrated. They'd been best friends for six years. She'd been suspecting he had a crush on her ever since his outbursts of jealousy while she was dating Viktor in the fourth year-but if he wanted to ask her out, she thought he should bloody well do it instead of acting like a prat around her all the time. She hastened a glance over her shoulder to see that Harry and Ron were a little ways behind her, talking to each other in muffled voices-not that she even had to guess what, or whom, they were talking about...She sighed and trudged on ahead in the direction of the school.

She was passing Hogsmeade Station when she noticed an odd shape in the snow, a ways off to her right. Something black and flecked with snow. It couldn't have been there too long or it would have been buried. She was about to call back to Harry and Ron that she was going to check it out, but they weren't paying any attention and besides, the wind was now whipping her face with such ferocity that she couldn't have said much even if she really wanted to.

Rolling her eyes once more at her two oblivious best friends, Hermione cut behind Hogsmeade Station, towards the unmoving object that seemed larger the closer she drew to it...but when she got close enough to see what was lying there, she couldn't help but scream.

"Hermione! What is it?" She was vaguely aware of Ron and Harry running through the snow behind her. About as aware as she was of her extended arm limply pointing at the scene before her-what she'd originally thought was a pile of robes that turned out to be a person. And not just any person.

"It's...it's her…"

"Who?" asked Ron pointedly, but as they crept closer, she knew there would be no mistaking the mass of black curls, the leather corseted dress, the thin, splayed out arms displaying the tattooed mark of the most evil wizard in the world-for anyone else's. This was the witch who'd served for decades as Voldemort's best lieutenant. Who'd fought and killed for him. Who'd tortured Neville Longbottom's parents into permanent insanity, escaped from a maximum security prison, _killed Harry's godfather. _She was one of the most wanted prisoners in the world...and yet...

"Bellatrix Lestrange. Attacked in Hogsmeade…" she heard herself murmur.

"We've got to tell someone!" said Ron as he drew his wand and pointed it at the body on the ground.

"No!" spat Harry. "I want to be the one to kill her. She killed Sirius!" He pointed his own wand at her, but she didn't move. "Wait maybe someone got here first...maybe she's already dead." Just then, something clicked inside Hermione, like her shock wore off and her sense of logic came rushing back on. _Bellatrix. Here. Was she dead? How did she get here? What happened to her? Was the attacker nearby and whose side were they on? Was Hogsmeade safe? _People had always praised Hermione's ability to stay rational, even in stressful situations, but in actuality she always felt she drew comfort from her own desire to know information. She'd always felt that chaos only came about from lack of understanding and as long as she knew everything was to know about any situation she found herself in, everything would be alright.

Frowning, she knelt down beside the witch in the snow and placed a gloved hand over her chest. Though they were faint, she could feel the woman's breaths against her palm, along with the shallow beating of her heart.

"She's not dead; she's breathing," she told the others finally. "...But something's wrong with her...she's injured...but how did she get here?" Hermione was thinking outloud, not really expecting the others to answer her. There was something oddly transfixing about Bellatrix in that moment-lying there, curled in a half-moon shape with her back to the three of them and her mess of black hair matted with crusted frost and bits of twigs, like she was frozen in time-not dead, but not sleeping, though not awake either.

"Who cares, let's turn her in and go get warm," said Ron and Harry nodded in his agreement. She couldn't imagine how this must be for him-seeing the person who'd killed his last remaining family member. She knew he probably wanted to finish her off, and though she couldn't blame him, she didn't think taking out an unconcious person was worth making her best friend a murderer for. Especially when there were plenty of Aurors and Order members up by the school gates-Lupin and Mad-Eye perhaps especially-who'd be happy to do it after they got all the information they needed out of her.

"Calm down, Ron. She's no threat like this...besides, Dumbledore's out of town til Monday, right Harry?" Hermione reminded them. She could almost feel Harry's heart sinking beside her. But she knew they had to make a decision soon...The weather was getting worse and the longer they stayed out, the more they risked other students finding them and causing chaos over Bellatrix. Besides, the attacker could still be nearby and she had no way of knowing whose side they or it might be on.

"Well, we can take her to McGonagall, then. Or one of the Aurors by the school gates…" said Ron, who pulled his Gryffindor scarf more tightly around his neck as the wind threatened to tug it away. She couldn't really disagree that that was likely the best thing to do in this situation-even perhaps, the most _logical_ thing, but something about it still didn't feel right. The idea of dragging an unconcious woman, a clear victim of _something_, over to people who might torture or kill her (or send her off to people or dementors who would do it in their stead) without hearing her side of the story felt oddly reminiscent of the Sirius Black predicament in their third year. They'd spent the whole year (as she knew many children from wizard families spent their whole lives) agonizing over Sirius Black-convicted mass murderer, betrayer of Harry's parents to Voldemort, and first ever Azkaban prison escapee-terrified he was coming to Hogwarts to murder them in their beds...only to find out he was innocent of all the crimes he'd been accused of. _What if..._No. She'd _seen _Bellatrix murder Sirius. Watched her torture Luna Lovegood in the Hall of Prophecy-all of that was true and even if nothing else was, it was more than enough of a good reason to turn her over to the Order of the Phoenix. _And yet..._She crept closer to Bellatrix, kneeling down in the slush beside her again, trying to discern the nature of her injuries and the origin of the blood slowly seeping around her and staining some of the nearby snow a sickly shade of pink.

She had a black cloak shrouded around her shoulders, but Hermione could still make out a deep slash between her neck and chest, jagged and uneven at its edges, like it was made with a large knife or claw rather than with magic. And even through the fabric of her gloves, Hermione could feel that the Death Eater's skin was much too cold.

"She's bleeding pretty badly...I think I've got some dittany in my bag…" She began digging through her school bag, feeling Harry and Ron's shocked and confused expressions boring into the back of her head.

"Hermione! You can't be serious! You know who she is-you know what she is!" Harry said exasperatedly, but still, he took a few steps closer. Finding what she was looking for, Hermione pulled a little crystal phial with a cork stopper out of her bag and let a few drops of its clear, green-tinged contents fall onto Bellatrix's cut.

"I know," she said. "But I just don't think we should do anything rash until we've got all the facts...whoever did this to her could still be around…"

"Whoever did this to her is on our side," muttered Ron darkly. Hermione rolled her eyes at him again.

"Not necessarily, Ronald, but naturally you know everything.." She was about to point out that if Bellatrix had made Voldemort angry enough (as they knew even his best Death Eaters sometimes did) it could mean trouble for everyone when suddenly, she heard a faint cry that extended into a full moan.

"Shut up, both of you! I think she's waking up!" Harry exclaimed and Bellatrix did indeed stir. She rolled over and faced them, tried to sit up, winced sharply and then collapsed back down.

All the while, she, Ron and Harry stood frozen in place above her.

"Where...where am I?" They looked at each other, exchanging anxious glances, none of them wanting to answer her.

"What do you reckon…" muttered Ron. Bellatrix looked confused and really out of it—giving off no trace of the formidable Death Eater they'd faced in the Department of Mysteries only months before.

"She's playing us, she's putting us on…" Harry said, but Hermione shook her head.

"I don't think she is...B...Bellatrix...are you okay?" She pushed Bellatrix's hair out of the way and put a few more drops of the dittany on her neck, causing the injured woman to wince in pain.

"You know Ron, I used to disagree with you whenever you said Hermione had gone mental, but this…" Harry trailed off when Bellatrix looked directly at him.

"Please...everything hurts and I don't know where I am," she whispered a desperation that reinforced Hermione's initial intuitive feeling that something was _off_ about her beyond her surface injuries. Her eyes looked glassy and glazed over, milky silver where she knew Bellatrix's eyes to be dark brown. And then it hit her like a stunning spell to the chest.

"I know a memory charm when I see one," she said. "I've read all about them. See the way her eyes look cloudy like that and her expression is completely vacant even though we know she's bound to be in pain? Someone put a memory charm on her. A powerful one. And recently. We can't turn her in like this...she doesn't know any of the horrible things that she's done…"

"But why would someone put a memory charm on her?"

"Honestly Ron, it's not that complicated. Obviously someone thought she knew something she shouldn't," said Hermione crassly.

"Then why not just kill her? The Death Eaters haven't exactly been known for their compassion, even with their own," he said, but Hermione had an answer for that, too.

"Maybe they cared too much about her to go that far. Maybe it was her husband? Or one of the Malfoys? They're her blood family…"

"But why would they want to curse Bellatrix?" said Ron. "She's on their side..isn't she?"

They looked at each other, all finally thinking what Hermione had wondered all along. Was it possible she could have shown even a hint of remorse? Was that why the Death Eaters had done this to her? Could she have been like Sirius, falsely accused of the crime she was imprisoned for all along? _No. She killed Sirius, right in front of us...And then laughed about it..._Hermione reminded herself again. Yet the woman lying on the ground in front of them didn't look like someone who'd ever killed or tortured anybody.

"I know what you're thinking Harry," said Hermione, barely meeting his eye. "But we can't just kill her or turn her in until we know the truth."

"Well now we've found her, we can't just leave her here," said Ron, raising his voice above the now fiercely howling wind.

"I know," said Hermione. "We'll have to get her up to the castle."

"Are you MAD, Hermione?!"

"Possibly…" she admitted. "But it's all we really can do. We can give her over to Dumbledore on Monday, but until then, we don't want to worry everyone, but we can't let her go...and this could be our last chance to get information out of her. She was very close to you-know-who, and after the teachers and Aurors take over, we won't be able to get near her...plus it's a little sad don't you think? Seeing her like this."

"Pathetic, more like," said Ron, but Harry was silent and she knew he was at least considering her points, though even she knew how crazy her idea sounded—but for the three of them, not so brazen compared to everything else they'd done.

"Sure, that'll work," he said sarcastically. "Let's waltz Azkaban Escapee Bellatrix Lestrange straight up to Hogwarts, past Filch and his secrecy sensors, past all the Aurors and hide her right under everyone's noses."

"Well, that's sort of what I did have in mind, actually. If she's right under their noses, they won't even have reason to suspect anything. Besides, it's only for two days until Dumbledore gets back," she said. Still, Harry and Ron stared questioningly at her.

"Oh come on, it's not like we haven't done anything like this before. Norbert? Buckbeak? Sirius? I mean, we've got the Room of Requirement...and the one eyed witch passageway Harry used to take to meet us in Hogsmeade in the third year...and we've got an invisibility cloak."

Ron shrugged and Harry sighed in his resignation, signs Hermione took as indication that she'd successfully convinced them.

"Right...well..Harry, can you help me get her standing? I think her leg is broken, so let her lean on us if she has to. The cloak will only cover us-Ron'll have to meet us up at the castle."

"What? Why? What if it's a trap and she does something to you guys? I might need to-"

"And have someone in Honeydukes catch sight of your ankles floating on by? If you want to be useful, Ron, maybe see if you can cause some sort of diversion so Filch doesn't notice we don't come back with you...come on Bellatrix, we're going to take you up to get warm."

As gently as she could, Hermione crouched down and helped Bellatrix to her feet. The Death Eater winced and leaned against Harry's left side as the gash under her neck began to ooze fresh blood. Ignoring a jibe from Ron, Hermione took off the Gryffindor scarf from around her neck and carefully wrapped it around Bellatrix's throat to soak up the blood.

"Can't have her bleeding and giving us away," she said, though she regretted her decision a few seconds later, when the sleet picked up and stung at her exposed skin. Harry unraveled the Invisibility Cloak from his school bag with the arm that was not supporting Bellatrix while Ron looked on dismally.

"Well, you seem to have everything in order...so I guess I'll just be going then. Good luck, mate," he said with an uncharacteristically hearty wave at Harry and no acknowledgement of Hermione.

She watched him disappear into the storm until he was truly no longer visible before she turned to Harry. "Well, I guess it's now or never then, isn't it?" She prompted, and he tossed the cloak over the three of them.

_**~And the summer became the fall**_

_**I was not ready for the winter**_

_**It makes no difference at all**_

_**'Cause I wear boots all summer long**_

_**My eye make up is dark and it's careless**_

_**Some circles around my eyes**_

_**Sometimes the real color of my skin**_

_**Is my eyes without any shadow~ **_

Getting back through Hogsmeade and into Honeydukes turned out to be easier than Hermione expected. Bellatrix was quiet in her confusion and didn't try to fight against them when she and Harry half-pulled, half-carried her into the little village sweet shop.

What was going to be difficult was getting to the cellar door in the back, as the store was packed with students struggling to avoid the miserable weather outside.

"Hold onto her so she doesn't fall, I'll clear a path," Hermione whispered and very slowly, she let go of Bellatrix. As predicted, the witch couldn't hold herself upright and she fell against Harry, who held her very awkwardly around the middle in both his arms. Meanwhile, Hermione poked the point of her wand ever so slightly out of the folds of the Invisibility Cloak and pointed it at an opposing case of Cauldron Cakes and Pumpkin Pasties.

"Confringo," she whispered and the case exploded, sending pastries scattering all around the shop.

"Who did that? Out of the way, out of the way," said the shop witch, who came bustling out from behind the counter swatting students aside as she stooped to repair the case.

"Now!" Hermione breathed into Harry's ear and, each putting an arm around Bellatrix again, they skirted across the shop and slipped through the cellar door, hoping no one saw them.

The stairs proved to be the tricky part.

"Okay, Harry please tell me these are the only stairs we have to deal with."

"Er...yeah, I think so...might be a few to go up when we get to the school, but other than that, no."

Supporting her between them, Hermione and Harry squeezed through the door and down the rickety staircase, hoping the noise in the sweet shop wouldn't give away the thumping sound that was Bellatrix's black boots dragging against the steps.

According to Harry, the underground passageway back to the school was just as dark and musty as he remembered from three years ago. It was also quite cold as it was poorly insulated from the drafts of outside air. The positive side was that they could take off the cloak and travel more comfortably, spread out along the path. Hermione and Harry each had an arm around Bellatrix to help hold her up so she wouldn't have to put weight on her broken leg, and Hermione held her wand aloft in her other hand to light the way in front of them.

They didn't encounter any other real challenges until they reached the end of the tunnel and caught sight of the trapdoor that Harry said would lead them up to the corridor outside the one-eyed witch passageway. Hermione climbed up first and extended her hands down while Harry hoisted Bellatrix up. Hermione helped the Death Eater through the trapdoor, holding her tightly so she wouldn't fall and noticing, though she didn't know why, that Bellatrix was a lot smaller in frame than she'd seemed at the ministry.

How they got the older witch through the school and up to the seventh floor, Hermione never knew. Harry scanned the Marauders' Map and after ensuring that the coast was clear, they cut through a passage behind a portrait of a suit of armor and met Ron outside the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy on the seventh floor.

"Harry? Hermione? Is that you?"

"Ssh! Yeah, it's us-under the cloak-"

"Well, let's get in the room-I've got something to tell you."

They were quite accomplished in using the Room of Requirement by this point, having used it to hold an illegal defense against the dark arts practice group the previous year, so when Hermione faced it head on, the place where she knew the door would appear, she asked the room to make them a place to hide Bellatrix Lestrange where she couldn't get out, but was also comfortable and accommodating to her needs, but when the room obliged, she was still more than impressed.

"It's outdone itself," said Ron. And it had. The three of them and Bellatrix (still covered by the cloak and supported between Harry and Hermione) were standing in a room the size of a large cathedral, whose high windows were sending shafts of light down upon towering walls built of what they knew must have been objects hidden by generations of Hogwarts inhabitants.

"We've called on the Room of Lost Things," whispered Hermione. There were piles upon piles of broken furniture, old books, fanged frisbees and other banned items, chipped bottles of congealed potions, scraps of yellowing notes once exchanged between students, journals with names scrawled across the front, hats, jewels, cloaks, rusting swords and a heavy blood-stained axe.

They strolled through an alleyway carved between two towering piles of treasure and on the other side, noticed a small clearing next to the Vanishing Cabinet in which Montague was lost last year. It was the only space in the room mostly absent of other things and in fact, looked like a small bedroom fit in amidst the clutter.

A large bed sat at its middle, fit with purple and black sheets, a number of soft purple pillows and a tall black canopy fixed to its headboard. There was a wardrobe to match, a plush black carpet, a glossy antique mirror and even a door aside the vanishing cabinet leading into a small bathroom, also fully furnished in violet and black.

"It's beautiful," said Hermione.

"Better than she deserves," muttered Ron, but the three of them led Bellatrix into the little clearing anyway. As soon as they crossed what must have been an invisible line, however, a few things happened. First, three black velvet armchairs appeared around the bed as if for Ron, Hermione and Harry to sit in. Second, they noticed that the area all around the rest of the room had gone foggy and strange.

"Brilliant, the room's put protective enchantments around this space for us," Hermione said, but when Ron and Harry met her with questioning looks, she went on.

"Bellatrix is confined to this area. She can't get out and no one else can get in except us. I reckon there are also soundproof barriers and invisibility spells in place so that to anyone else in the Room of Lost Things, this space would just appear as another pile of old junk-just like how Hogwarts might appear to outsiders as a condemned building or a rubbish yard, obvious to anyone who's ever read _Hogwarts: A History-"_

"-So just you, then," Ron interrupted. Hermione rolled her eyes for what must have been the upteenth time that day since Ron just couldn't ever resist throwing in a dig at her, even given the circumstances. When she was young, barely school age, Hermione's mother once told her that if a boy bullied her it probably meant he liked her. Other women older than her, muggle and witch alike, had echoed this sentiment for years, yet it had never stopped sounding like rubbish to Hermione. Refusing to give Ron's rude behavior any more of her attention, she occupied herself with helping Bellatrix into bed. The Death Eater winced a bit as Hermione detangled her from the Invisibility Cloak's folds, but otherwise did not move or speak while the younger witch settled her into bed and pulled the blankets up around her.

"So, Ron, were you able to cause a diversion?" Harry asked. He and Ron were sitting in two of the armchairs, while Hermione remained across the room from them, silently casting warming spells over Bellatrix.

"I didn't have to-that's what I wanted to tell you-Katie Bell's been cursed!"

"She WHAT?!" Hermione exclaimed loudly, forgetting her irritation at his earlier jibe.

"Yeah, I was heading back up to the school with Katie and her friend Leanne from Hufflepuff when all of a sudden they started arguing about something Katie had in her hand-a little package. Katie told Leanne she got it from someone in the bathroom at the Three Broomsticks and she had to deliver it to someone. Leanne told her not to touch it, but Katie did anyway and it sort of came open and Katie rose into the air like the Muggles at the Quidditch World Cup. Anyway, she sort of screamed and Hagrid started running over saying it looked like she'd been cursed-" Ron explained rather quickly to Hermione and Harry's slack-jawed faces.

"Then Hagrid took her back to the castle and me and Leanne had to go see Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape, who took one look at the package-some kind of necklace-and said Katie was lucky to be alive and that she'd probably been imperiused back at the Three Broomsticks. They asked about you two, but I made up some story...said you were shopping with Ginny and I'd decided to come back early and do my Charms homework...do you think -she- could have done that to Katie?" he said, with a jerk of his neck in the direction of Bellatrix's semi-conscious form.

"How could she have? She was with us the whole time," said Hermione reasonably.

"But maybe whoever attacked her could have done it," said Ron. Harry shot up in his seat like he'd only just remembered something important.

"I bet it was Malfoy," he said. "He was looking at a necklace, in Borgin and Burkes, remember? We saw him-"

"Oh, Harry!" Hermione cut in furiously. "Ssh-you can't speak freely about him or his family in front of her, remember? What if familiar names and events trigger her memories or her...rather uncouth personality…" Hermione thought the odds of being able to trigger memories in someone under a spell this powerful were slim to probably none, but she didn't think they could stand to take any chances.

"But Harry, he couldn't have," Ron cut in, ignoring Hermione. "Leanne said Katie got it from the girls' bathroom."

"She only said Katie got back from the bathroom with it, not that she got it in the bathroom itself-" Harry and Ron went back and forth about this theory for a short while, though they didn't mention Malfoy by name again, and eventually, they left the Room of Requirement entirely. Hermione volunteered to take the first "watch" over the Death Eater for the night, wanting to take more time to heal her wounds and understand the nature of the memory spell anyway. Harry and Ron left for the common room (still bickering about Harry's plans to confront Professor McGonagall with his suspicions) and promised to meet Hermione back in the Room the next day after breakfast.

After they left, Hermione sunk into one of the now vacant armchairs as the reality hit her that she was alone with Bellatrix Lestrange. Wanted prisoner, notorious murderer and torturer, first lieutenant and longtime devotee and rumored lover to Voldemort. And Hermione was alone with her, her mind swimming with thoughts. Who had the package Katie Bell was carrying been meant for? Whoever it was had a narrow escape-could it have been meant for Dumbledore? Professor Slughorn? Or someone else? Who gave her the package? And were they the same person who had attacked Bellatrix and left her unconscious and void of her memories in Hogsmeade that day? What was more, she couldn't believe they had managed to successfully hide _Bellatrix Lestrange _within the walls of , if anything, _did _she remember?

_**~And when I call**_

_**Will you walk gently**_

_**Through my shadow**_

_**The ones who sing at night**_

_**The ones who sing at night**_

_**The ones you dream of**_

_**The ones who walk away**_

_**Capes pulled around them tight**_

_**Cryin' for the night**_

_**Cry for the night bird tonight~**_

**A/N: For readers who read Raw, this beginning part is the only piece that's the same in plot save for the perspective difference. Moving forward, it'll be different. **


	2. Chapter 2: Blankets That I Love

**Chapter 2: Blankets That I Love **

_20 October. _

Hermione blinked open her eyes and rubbed the uncomfortable stitch in the back of her neck. She'd fallen asleep in the common room again. Only it wasn't the common room. She was curled into a highbacked chair with a black and violet velvet brocade pattern embroidered into it and a silky black afghan over her legs. The first glimmers of morning sunshine dappled the room in thin beams of light that streamed through a floor to ceiling stained glass window. And then she remembered. And risked stealing a glance across the room to the dark four poster canopied bed upon which the most evil witch in the wizarding world's collective living memory was beginning to stir.

"Where am I?" Bellatrix murmured suddenly, her voice muffled somewhat by the heap of blankets covering her. She'd slept all evening and through the night and Hermione's only interaction with her had been saying a few healing charms and checking for the rise and fall of her chest every so often just to make sure she was still breathing. And now Bellatrix was talking.

"Oh. Bellatrix...how...how are you feeling?" she asked somewhat hesitantly.

"Like shit," the older woman muttered. "I feel like I fell off a broomstick-what happened to me?" She was rubbing her forehead like it was hurting her and Hermione tried to recall if she knew any headache spells.

"Well, what do you remember?"

"Fuck if I know, one minute I was…" Bellatrix trailed off. She sat up a little bit, resting her chin in her hands. "I don't...I don't remember."

"What?"

"Anything." Her eyes got wide and Hermione could tell she was scared. Was she playing her? She didn't even think Bellatrix could pull something like that off.

"Is it...is it alright if I check your bandages?" she offered and when Bellatrix offered no objection, Hermione swallowed nervously and approached her bedside. The night before, Hermione had used dittany to stop the bleeding on the obvious cut stretching from the side of her neck down to her chest and then used a bandaging charm to cover it. She'd used heating and drying spells against Bellatrix's cold skin and checked on her every so often as she slept, but hadn't done much more than that. If it was all a trap, she hadn't wanted to get caught in it. But now she was feeling badly like maybe the Death Eater really _was _lost, confused and hurting-and sure, maybe one could argue Bellatrix deserved it-but...something twinged inside of Hermione. She felt bad for this helpless version of the woman before her, even though she didn't want to.

She pressed the back of her hand against the pulse point on the side of Bellatrix's neck. She felt like she was back to a normal temperature and her heartbeat was steady, but Hermione frowned when the cut started bleeding again, seeping against the thin bandage. She carefully removed it and Bellatrix jerked sharply away.

"It's okay, I'm trying to help, I promise..._Vulnera Sanentur...Vulnera Sanentur_…"she cast the spell while directing her wand at the blood, like she was siphoning it back into Bellatrix's body while her eyes traced the outline of the wound. It was shaped like the drag mark of a talon or a thick, curved blade. Maybe she'd been attacked by a creature of some sort? But that wouldn't explain the memory loss. Or the glazed look in her eyes the night before that so closely resembled the after effects of _Obliviate._ She'd obviously gotten on the wrong side of someone, yet they didn't kill her, which certainly didn't seem to fit the typical Death Eater action plan.

After she resealed a new bandage over the cut, Hermione used the _Tergeo_ spell to clean the other witch up a bit and wondered when Ron and Harry were going to come by. She imagined the news that Katie Bell had been cursed must have made it all over the school by now and she was grateful to escape the resulting gossip by waiting with Bellatrix up in the Room of Requirement for Harry and Ron to meet them with breakfast, as food was the one thing the Room was unable to provide.

"Is there anything you can do for my head? It feels like it there's a whole cauldron pressing down on it?"

"I'd have to go and get you a potion, but maybe you're just hungry? It has to have been awhile since you've eaten anything—"

"I know what being hungry feels like. I'm not a child," Bellatrix interrupted brusquely and with a taste of her usual temper hovering under the surface of whatever was going on with her.

"Alright...well, food's on the way. I am going to get you some water, though," said Hermione. And as soon as she said this, a silver goblet appeared before her on the bedside table and she took it into the small bathroom to fill it, glancing back every couple of seconds like some part of her was still waiting for Bellatrix to spring up and attack her at any moment. _She can't. I've got her wand..._the younger witch reminded herself.

"Hermione!" She spun on her heel in the midst of setting the glass of water back down next to Bellatrix. Harry and Ron emerged through the protective enchantments, Ron with a bag stuffed with breakfast treats from downstairs and Harry with a flagon of pumpkin juice.

"There you two are! I've been waiting for ages!" she exclaimed, taking the food parcel out of Ron's hands and helping herself to a glazed danish.

"Anything to eat, Bellatrix?" Hermione offered, but the Death Eater shook her head.

"She doesn't remember anything," she said in an undertone to Harry and Ron. "She's barely talking to me at all."

"Do you think she's playing you?" Ron asked with a slightly fearful glance at Bellatrix.

"No, but I do think she's in some sort of shock...I mean how would you like it if you woke up somewhere unfamiliar and didn't remember hardly anything at all?"

"...Sounds like me every time I fall asleep in Potions class."

"Honestly, Ronald…" Hermione sighed exhasperatedly and turned back to Bellatrix, challenging him to take _something_ seriously for once.

"You're sure you don't want to try to eat something? You'll feel better. You've got to be starving," she held the food parcel out to the Death Eater in a way that was definitely more of a directive than an offering. Bellatrix just looked a little taken aback, like she didn't know what to do. _It's not her fault Ron's being an idiot, _she reminded herself and felt her posture soften. Bellatrix's dark eyes flashed down to the pastries and then up at Hermione before she reached out a hand and snatched a sugar brioche. As she did so, the side of her hand brushed against Hermione's own and the younger witch felt like a jolt of electricity had pierced her through.

_She killed Sirius. Tortured the Longbottoms. She's evil. She deserves to suffer for what she did. _

In her conscious thoughts, Hermione was repulsed by Bellatrix. But a little deeper, there was something else. Despite all that she knew she had done and all that she was sure the Death Eater was capable of, she had to admit that Bellatrix did seem very harmless and pathetic like this...even kind of soft...in a way she would have never noticed before when the only Bellatrix she'd ever seen was a murderer.

"Hermione what is it?" Harry asked. He'd been watching the exchange between Hermione and Bellatrix curiously.

"Well...I was just thinking, it's fascinating, isn't it?"

"What's fascinating?"

"Seeing her like this. So vulnerable and scared...it makes you wonder if it's just the shock from whatever happened to her or if this whole other person was inside of her all along."

"Hermione, everything she's done has been by her own choice. That's who she is. You saw her, she killed Sirius, she laughed about it, she—"

"No! You've got to be careful what you say in front of her. You could trigger something and she could get freak out or get violent—," said Hermione anxiously.

"_Ahem."_ All three of them looked up from their breakfast at once to find Bellatrix Lestrange staring pointedly at them, a frightening determination in her eyes that wasn't there before.

"Hermione. This boy. He called you Hermione," said Bellatrix in a voice that sent a shiver down Hermione's spine. _Potter needs more persuasion? Let him watch while we torture the girl. I'll do it. _

_They know how to play! Itty. Bitty. Baby. _

"Yes. Do...do you know me from somewhere?" she asked hesitantly, already afraid of her answer.

"No," she replied, to Hermione's relief. "But you know me. You know what happened to me. I know you do."

Hermione exchanged glances with Harry and Ron. When neither one of them spoke, she turned back to the Death Eater.

"Bellatrix, what do you remember about how you got here?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all," she said and then averted her eyes and retreated back into her silence for the remainder of their visit.

Ron's night of watch over Bellatrix that night went much as uneventfully Hermione's, so by the time Monday rolled around, they all agreed that she was harmless enough to not be an immediate threat to everyone's safety and that they could probably stand to wait and see what, if anything, they could get out of her before turning her over to the Order. It was supposed to be Harry's night, but he had to meet with Dumbledore and Hermione wanted to check Bellatrix's cut again anyway, so it was she who returned to the Room of Requirement Monday night.

The Death Eater was sleeping when Hermione settled herself in one of the black and purple armchairs and took out her homework. It was much quieter in here than in the common room; much easier to concentrate.

She took out a quill, ink, and parchment from her schoolbag and propped open her copy of _Advanced Potion Making_ to work on her essay for Slughorn on the draught of living death. She was determined to get higher marks than Harry on this assignment and prove once and for all that hard work and understanding of the material were always preferable to cheating.

Some time later, she had just gotten to the chapter on _Wormwood and Its Uses in Potion-Making _when the sound of rustling blankets made her pause. She shut the book and saw Bellatrix sitting up awake and looking curiously at her from her bed.

"Potions was my favorite class," she commented, gesturing to the book. If Hermione had expected her to say anything at all, it wasn't that.

"Oh...well, I rather like it, too. After all, normally, it's the kind of magic you've got to understand theory behind to make it work. You've got to really know the uses for the ingredients and in what quantities and at what temperatures instead of just flourishing your wand and hoping for the best," said Hermione, with a little more bitterness than she'd intended.

Again, Bellatrix surprised her by offering her a small smile and laughing in a way that was significantly different than when she was teasing her in the Department of Mysteries. This laughter was softer, lighter, almost musical.

"It was my best class. I liked that it was a solitary art...And I did see it that way. As an art. You've got to be able to follow directions of course, but it's more than that. I liked holding the herbs and crystals and roots in my hands and really feeling the power in them to understand the ways they worked for and against each other."

"Exactly. It's not enough to mix Wormwood and Belladonna together with powdered black moonstone. Because if you use too much wormwood, you hallucinate...or if you use mugwort instead of belladonna or if your moonstone wasn't powdered at the right planetary energy...And if you use too much belladonna at too low a temperature—"

"...That Drought of Living Death becomes a lot less living, doesn't it?" said Bellatrix, laughing musically again. Hermione could hardly believe what she was hearing—the notorious Bellatrix Lestrange an..._academic_?

"That's what I'm writing my essay on, actually. All the different ways you can use the same ingredients to get different strengths of the same potion, or a different potion entirely. I wanted to go into detail about all the primary ingredients in the Drought of Living Death, but I had to narrow my scope a bit, so I'm just researching Wormwood and Valerian Root for this paper."

"Well outside of smelling like shit, I know Valerian Root is also used in protection and self-purification potions. It was widely thought for a long time that it attracted cats, however—"

"-the Pied Piper of Hamlin used valerian to have power over rats. So it's actually the rats the root attracts, and the cats just follow the food source," Hermione interrupted and then immediately felt her face flush pink like it did whenever she accidentally called out in class.

"Exactly. But, interesting history aside, that fucking smell...I hate using it in my potions. Always try to substitute it out. I remember when I was in school, thinking Professor Slughorn was going to be upset with me for using a mix of powdered root of asphodel and chamomile in its place, but the Mercurial planetary energy and properties are the same, and mixed together they give a potion the same consistency as one with a Valerian root base. He ended up giving me ten house points," said Bellatrix.

Hermione was shocked on multiple levels. For one thing, it seemed like Bellatrix had strong memories of her school days despite not remembering anything else. Did it mean that her memories were returning somehow? Or just that someone only took her more recent memories? And for another thing, Hermione had never met anyone before with such an intrinsic grasp of herbal magic...though her apparent knack for reformulating tried and true potion recipes to suit her own needs was quite reminiscent of Harry's obnoxious Half Blood Prince. Was it possible that Bellatrix….? _No. Why would she have called herself a Prince? And besides, she's a PureBlood…_

"As for Wormwood, that's one of my favorites. It has a number of uses-sleeping and suspension droughts of course, and as you already know, when mixed with just a touch of belladonna it's a fun little hallucination potion popular at parties. With Mugwort, it's said to induce prophetic dreams. You picked a good topic for your paper-a lot of different ground you could cover."

"Isn't there? It's a bit inspired by people who think they don't have to pay attention if they're good at copying other people or following instructions blindly without understanding them." Hermione felt guilty as soon as she said it. Sure she was a bit frustrated with him at the moment, but Harry was her best friend. What was she doing throwing digs about him to _Bellatrix_, regardless of whether they were direct or not?

The older witch was again laughing. "There's a story there, I can tell," she said.

"Oh you've no idea," Hermione heard herself reply. She was finding it quite easy to talk to Bellatrix-just as easy as talking to Harry and Ron, in fact-that she hardly noticed the hours passing by. Bellatrix tossed around facts and tidbits she remembered from her school days while Hermione finished her homework and then they joked about Slughorn's Slug Club (which Bellatrix also remembered having been a part of) and traded stories about teachers and classes and favorite books with such ease that before she knew it, the first rays of dawn sunlight were peeking through the high cathedral-like windows, casting Bellatrix's pale skin in balmy lilac.

It was like talking to someone with the humor of Ron and the reckless spirit of Harry, but who also had similar interests and an intellectual mind that worked in a way akin to Hermione's own. From what she gathered, Bellatrix remembered a great deal about her school days, just not too much after that...but Hermione didn't press her on it. Right now, the Bellatrix that owned those gaping holes in her memory did not exist, and this new model in her place was far more pleasant than the surly vindictive model from the Daily Prophet Wanted posters.

Just after six in the morning, Hermione gathered her things to leave and get ready for class. She was tired, but at the same time she'd gotten a lot of work done and didn't think she'd wasted the evening...and the notion that she had so much to tell Harry and Ron acted a bit like adrenaline propelling her into motion.

"Your friends...a different one of you comes to see me every night. Why is that?" Bellatrix caught her off guard just as she was about to leave through the barrier of protective enchantments. What could she tell her? Hermione decided on the truth...well, a partial truth at any rate.

"It's to...keep you safe," she said, but the older witch frowned.

"Safe from what? Please. No one will tell me what's going on and you know, I'm sure of it." Her eyes were wide and her head tilted to one side in her own pleading sort of way.

"I'm really sorry," Hermione heard herself say (why was she apologizing to a Death Eater?!). "It's just not...time...for you to know yet."

"But you will tell me, right, Hermione?"

"I'll see what I can do," she said, before heading out through the barrier of enchantments and leaving Bellatrix, she knew, more confused than ever.

___**And so the winter is really here now**_

_**And the blankets that I love**_

_**I am surrounded sometimes**_

_**By too much love~**_


	3. Chapter 3: The Ones Who Sing At Night

**Chapter 3: The Ones Who Sing at Night**

_27 October. _

"How was your day?" asked Bellatrix when Hermione strode into the Room of Requirement that night well after midnight.

"Horrible," she replied honestly. That complete ARSE, Ronald Weasley! Who did he think he was, anyway? All in a temper all of a sudden. Just because he was frustrated with himself for being lousy at Quidditch didn't give him the right to—

"Cat got your tongue?" Bellatrix broke into Hermione's angry reverie.

"Oh no, it's nothing, it doesn't matter," the younger witch replied with a flippant wave of her hand while she got out her homework. She felt Bellatrix's eyes tracking her movements as she uncorked her ink bottle and dipped her quill into it. She was just about to start writing her paper for Snape about the advantages of using nonverbal spells, when she heard Bellatrix sigh so dramatically she couldn't hardly ignore it.

"Something wrong?"

"Not to be rude, but I spend all day in this bloody room by myself and most evenings with people who've made it quite clear they don't like me and have no interest in conversation, so you don't have to tell me your business if you don't want to, of course, but I appreciate any conversation. Even if it's unpleasant." She sounded a lot like the old Bellatrix then, but rather than find it off-putting, Hermione exhaled slowly. And understood.

For all she'd heard, Harry and Ron didn't talk to Bellatrix that much or even at all during their nights on watch. She knew Harry often tried to interrogate the Death Eater, who in turn grew upset when she didn't get answers to the questions she posed back to him about her missing memories and her past. Harry then ended up spending a lot of time planning Quidditch practices and reading the notes in the margins of his stupid Prince's book. Ron, though he'd never admit it, was terrified Bellatix was going to lapse into her evil ways at any moment and Hermione knew he dreaded being alone with her.

"I'm sorry. It's not right for me to project my anger on you, you didn't do anything wrong. I'm just a bit at odds with a good friend at the moment."

"The ginger, Ron is it?"

"Yes, but how did you know—"

"You're not the only one who wears your emotions on your sleeve," said the Death Eater with a somewhat bemused smirk playing at her lips. "Something about you and a certain Viktor Krum snogging quite deliciously from the sounds of it."

"Why would he talk to you about _that_? Of all things?" Hermione had, after all, been under the impression that Ron didn't talk to Bellatrix at all. And for all his show about being afraid of the Death Eater, to go behind Hermione's back and spout her personal life made her seethe in a way she couldn't put into words.

"He didn't so much as talk to me as talk AT me and most of what he said I couldn't quite follow...but I caught that he'd gotten into a fight with his sister on his way up here to see me and she was kissing some friend of his behind a tapestry and she called him immature and said everyone's been kissed except him and he, Ron, thought who were you, Hermione, to snog this Krum fellow and who was his sister to throw that in his face….Honestly, I think it's a clear indication of how unbelievably bored I am that I invested that much in any of it," said Bellatrix with a shrug.

"That git. Well he's got to get over himself. He shouldn't have told you that. Besides, it was two years ago that I went out with Krum, what does it even matter now." Hermione was torn between going right then to the common room and giving Ron an earful for venting to Bellatrix and just trying to ignore it and stay out of the drama.

"He sounded more jealous than anything."

"Jealous? Because I had a boyfriend two years ago and he _snogged_ me? If Ron wants to go and kiss someone, he's at perfect liberty...I mean I'm sure there are plenty of girls who would—"

"No, for someone so superbly intelligent, you can be a bit thick," said Bellatrix, rolling her heavily lidded eyes. "Not jealous that someone kissed you. Jealous of the person who _got_ to kiss you. Wishing it could have been him instead."

"What?!" Hermione exclaimed, blushing as red as the Gryffindor badge on her robes. "That's _completely_ off the mark."

"Is it?" Bellatrix seemed to be hinting at something obvious, but Hermione wasn't following.

"Ron doesn't-we're not—"

"Would it bother you if he were interested in you?" She was smirking again, like she knew something Hermione didn't and the younger witch was starting to resent it.

"What do you mean? I don't understand."

"I'm tired of this bed. I feel like an invalid. Let's move somewhere else and talk."

"Where do we…" But as soon as she said it, a change overcame the little space. The two other chairs normally reserved for Harry and Ron changed shape and merged into a comfortable-looking black couch trimmed in indigo lace and pushed back against the window overlooking the snowy grounds below. Bellatrix tossed away the covers of her bed with a flourish of her hand and relocated herself to the couch.

"There. Now we can talk as friends." She patted the space beside her and Hermione felt a spark of adrenaline, fear and excitement. Bellatrix wanted her to sit with her. Should she? Was it a trap? Could she fight her off if need be? Very quickly, Hermione decided that yes, given she had a wand and Bellatrix didn't and that she was still injured, it was probably safe to sit with her. The Death Eater watched Hermione, her legs crossed and her messy hair falling over her shoulders and still smirking like she could see the younger witch thinking intently about this particular, seemingly simple enough, decision.

Then, as though no time had passed at all, Hermione crossed the tiny bedroom to sit next to Bellatrix-not too close, but not too far away, either.

"You er...smell nice," she said. A musky, dragon's blood kind of smell.

"Thank you. I've found that with the exception of food, my wand, and answers, this room gives me anything I like...including my favorite shampoo."

"Speaking of answers…" said Hermione. "Why do you think Ron's interested in me?"

"Are you interested in him?"

"What does that matter?"

"I'm just trying to understand; see the whole board."

"I don't know...I've never really thought about it…" Hermione lied. Of course she'd thought about it. She'd started feeling interested in Ron at the end of fourth year, when Viktor was asking her to visit him over the summer and she thought about it and found herself wanting to go to the Burrow instead. And then between the Order of the Phoenix and the D.A. and Umbridge and O.W.L.S, she'd been distracted, but if she ever imagined herself with anyone at school, it was always Ron. But it never occurred to her that he might feel the same way. Or any way, really. He'd been especially self-centered lately, too, what with making the Quidditch team and all. While she was occupied with her thoughts, she noticed the older witch had gone fairly silent.

"What're you thinking about?" Hermione prompted.

"Well. I was hoping...tonight, that we might talk," the Death Eater replied, and her eyes looked sad.

"Oh. What about?"

"Me. This place. You said before that you would tell me what's going on."

"Oh." Hermione frowned. She _had_ told Bellatrix she would give her some more information...hadn't she?

"I've been here a week now. And before you try to lie, I already know it isn't any kind of hospital. I know I'm in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts. I also know I'm trapped here in some kind of section of the room of lost things and even though I'm almost physically healed, I still don't have my memory, or my wand, and I still can't leave." There were tears welling up at the corners of Bellatrix's eyes, and Hermione could see them fighting against the thick eyeliner gathered there, against the Death Eater's own resistance to pain or any form of weakness.

"Well...I know I've asked you this before...but I haven't asked you in quite this way before—what is the last thing you _can_ remember?"

"See, that's the complicated thing. It's not so simple. It's not really one thing I remember before I blacked out. It's a series of things and non-things at the same time."

"Meaning?"

"I remember everything...as clearly as one can remember things that happened long ago...from up until I was about 17...and after that, everything is blurry. I know that my little sister got married and had a baby, but I don't remember the baby's name. And I know I was married at some point, but I don't know when or to whom. And I remember little day to day things like times I went to the grocery or the pub, but I don't remember where I lived...and Hermione, I'm really scared." Bellatrix let her arm fall against the side of the couch and cast her face away, probably to hide the single tear Hermione saw escape its confines and fall into its owner's lap, where it soon became lost in the folds of the thin black robes she was wearing.

Hermione didn't know what to do. In a way, Bellatrix felt like a friend and if Harry or Ron or Ginny or Luna were upset, she would want to get them feeling better as soon as she could, in whatever way she could. But this was different. The Death Eater was not her friend...and the pain, what she was feeling, what Hermione could feel radiating off of her in spiraling waves, wasn't an ordinary upset. It was a lost, confused, lonely sort of upset…and the only thing she had to associate with it was a memory. An eleven year old girl who always felt different, excited to receive an invitation to an entirely new world, but nervous about having to leave behind everything she knows, though thinking it's going to be worth it because she's going to be with others who are like her. And then she's still different. Still strange. Still not quite _enough _despite all her best efforts, simply because of where she came from, that other world that over time will feel further and further away until the girl is drifting somewhere in between...but at least there are books and she is clever and there's so so much to learn. And learning feels safe. Makes everything seem more familiar, even when it isn't.

Of course it was natural that Bellatrix wanted to know everything she could. Of course she was frustrated that she couldn't find the answers she was seeking in any book or in anything she ever learned in a classroom. Hermione saw an arm she recognized as her own reach out to touch Bellatrix's shoulder and she shivered even though she was rather warm.

"Maybe...maybe things will feel more comfortable if we can sort out some basic things you do remember. To start, what is your name?"

"Bellatrix Druella Lestrange, formerly Black," the other woman said with conviction.

"Good...and how old are you?"

"I feel like I'm still 17 since that's the age I remember most clearly...but I know that can't be true since I remember my little sister turning 19 and having her baby. So I must be in my 20's or 30's...but like I said, I don't know. Hermione, please. What happened to my memories? You know what happened. I know you do." She was trying to keep her voice even, but Hermione could sense the desperation in it anyway.

"Well, I don't know for sure. But I think someone took your memories."

"Took them? But who? And why?"

"I don't know, and nor do Ron or Harry. We found you this way. We thought maybe you knew something you shouldn't have."

"Whatever I might have known is gone now," Bellatrix said with a shrug. "Merlin knows the bastard got what they wanted." She was quickly returning to herself...her new self, her raw self, but herself nonetheless. She turned towards Hermione and let their eyes lock for a brief second that hung in the air between them, bearing the weight of everything. Her presence was binding then. Maybe it was her faint smile despite her pain, or her eyes, or the snowy moonlight glowing silvery on her skin...maybe it was the fact that she listened when Hermione spoke to her, but she couldn't have looked away from her if she wanted to. And in that moment she knew she was going to help the Death Eater in any way she could. She didn't know why it hit her so powerfully then, but the Bellatrix before her wasn't the same woman who'd murdered Sirius or tortured Neville's parents or professed her love for one of the most evil wizards of all time...Maybe the old Bellatrix deserved to feel hurt and lost and alone, but this new person...was she on a path toward redemption, or a rebirth entirely? Maybe just a resurrection of all she could have been if she'd never met Voldemort.

"Bellatrix-"

"Please. If we are to be friends, then you may call me Bella." _Bella. _It sounded nice in her head...like a charm. The kind that was powerful and beautiful to look at all at once-like _Incendio _or _Aguamenti. _

"It's Halloween in a couple of days, isn't it?" the older witch remarked suddenly. "I smelled the pumpkin and cinnamon coming from the castle earlier this afternoon….the Halloween feast was always one of my favorite days at Hogwarts...I would love to see it again."

"Well, you know we can't do that...but I'll be sure to bring you plenty of the food-and some pumpkins, too, whatever I can find."

"We can have our own feast," said Bella. And her eyes sparkled with new fire all of a sudden.

"That actually sounds...pretty spectacular," Hermione admitted, saying the first word that came to mind. _Spectacular?!_

"I'll look forward to it...and Hermione? Thank you." She smiled...and laughed again, musically.


	4. Chapter 4: The Ones You Dream Of

**Chapter 4: The Ones You Dream Of**

_28 October. _

"So how was Slughorn's latest party?" Hermione asked Harry in Herbology on Friday morning. Slughorn had actually asked her personally to check Harry's free evenings so she knew he hadn't been able to get out of going to this one.

"Not too bad, actually," said Harry, while putting on his protective googles. "He went on about his famous ex-students a bit, you know, like he does, and he was up McLaggen's ass since he's so well connected, but the food was good and then he introduced us to Gwenog Jones."

"Who's Gwenog Jones?" asked Hermione, finding it odd that Harry knew of someone famous she hadn't heard of.

"Gwenog Jones?" said Ron, his eyes widening under his own goggles. "The Gwenog Jones? Captain of the Holyhead Harpies?" _Oh. Of course. Quidditch._

"Quite enough chat over here!" said Professor Sprout briskly, bustling over and looking stern. "You're lagging behind, everybody else has started, and Neville's already got his first pod!"

"Okay, Professor, we're starting now!" said Ron, adding quietly, when she had turned away again, "should've used Muffliato, Harry."

"No, we shouldn't!" said Hermione at once, instantly cross as ever at the mention of using one of the Half-Blood Prince's made-up spells. Though she had made exceptions when having a private conversation with them about Bellatrix. But that was different, she reminded herself. And Professor Sprout was right-it became increasingly difficult to carry a conversation once the Snargaluff plant attacked them. It turned out the plant wasn't too fond of having its pods extracted.

After beating back its spiky vines, they managed to extract their first pod and drop it into a bowl with looks of disgust on their faces.

"Don't be squeamish, squeeze it out, they're best when they're fresh!" called Professor Sprout.

"Anyway," said Harry, continuing their interrupted conversation as though a lump of wood had not just attacked them, "Slughorn's going to have a Christmas party, you're free on Tuesdays evenings, right Hermione?" She rolled her eyes, but nodded.

Meanwhile, Ron, who was attempting to burst the pod in the bowl by putting both hands on it, standing up, and squashing it as hard as he could, said angrily,

"And this is another party just for Slughorn's favorites, is it?"

"Err...just for the Slug Club, yes," Harry replied awkwardly.

"It's pathetic. Well, I hope you enjoy your party. Why don't you try hooking up with McLaggen, Hermione? Then Slughorn can make you King and Queen Slug —"

"We're each allowed a plus one," Harry offered, looking from Hermione and Ron, then back to the Snargaluff plant, as though he were trying to bridge the tense gap between them all. Hermione felt her face flush red as Ron's words stung her. Why did everything have to turn into a dig at her? Especially when it was Harry who brought up the stupid party in the first place! Bellatrix's voice filled her mind. _Would it bother you if he were interested in you? Are you interested in him? _Hermione's first instinct was to retaliate, but she swallowed her pride and decided to test Bella's theory instead.

"Well, seeing as we're allowed to bring guests...would you, I mean, that is to say...you could come with me? Unless you really do think it's that stupid, then don't bother," she added hastily at the end so she didn't sound too invested in his answer.

"You're asking me to the Christmas party?"

"Yes, but obviously if you'd rather I _hooked up with McLaggen_ . . ."

"No, I wouldn't," he said. Hermione waited for him to say something else, but he went back to the Snargaluff pod like nothing had happened, but she felt like something unspoken had passed between them. The rest of the Herbology lesson passed without further mention of Slughorn's party. Although Hermione tried to pay extra attention to Ron over the next two days, she didn't notice any difference in the way he was acting around her except that he was maybe a little bit politer. Not that she saw much of him-he and Harry were a week away from their first Quidditch match of the season and had almost nightly practices. Hermione supposed she'd just have to wait to see what happened under the influence of butterbeer in Slughorn's dimly lit room on the night of the party. In the meantime, however, she had more pressing worries.

It was a topic they tried to avoid bringing up, especially due to the high potential that they could be overheard, but not only for that reason: what were they going to do about Bellatrix? Ron was still all for giving her over to Dumbledore and Harry was increasingly moving over to his camp, mostly because of the amount of time watch shifts and bringing her food took up, and because he couldn't see them getting much information out of Bellatrix any time soon.

"...but it is becoming problematic," he said in a hushed voice in the common room on Sunday night. "The longer we wait, the more questions we'll be asked. How and why did we keep her here for so long, that sort of thing...maybe we should have given her over straightaway-"

"How can you say that?!" Hermione found herself cutting in more loudly than she'd intended. Harry and Ron both dropped the essays they were working on and looked at Hermione like a Snargaluff pod had just sprouted out of her head. "I mean...she's-it's-fascinating, isn't it?" She was speaking more quickly now, trying to cover herself-for what? She didn't know, but she felt the familiar rush of passion that causes like S.P.E.W. usually inspired in her. "She doesn't remember anything about the war or Voldemort or the Death Eaters at all-" she continued (Ron winced at the sound of the evil wizard's name). "We're getting to know her separate from all of that. She doesn't know anything she's done. She's brilliant and charming and interesting and...it's her second chance. Her memories were taken for a reason...either someone is out for her or someone wanted her to have that second chance. If we give her up, then it's all for nothing. She's safe here. She's _only _safe here...and if we give her up...she'll die." The other two were still staring wide-eyed at her.

"But _why_ would we want to get to know her?" Ron said finally. "We know what she's done. We know who she is and what she's capable of-she doesn't deserve a second chance, 'Mione."

"How would you know what she does or doesn't deserve when you don't talk to her?" Hermione felt a rush of anger surge through.

"...That's out of order...siding with that _Death Eater _over us!" said Ron, now raising his own voice too.

"Honestly, be quiet, both of you.. _muffliato,_" Harry hissed the Prince's spell out of the corner of his mouth as a group of giggling third year girls entered through the portrait hole. "I think you're both making fair points-and Hermione, even though I'm surprised at you, I do agree...just giving her away to the aurors doesn't seem right, but I agree with Ron, too-" he added when Ron opened his mouth to protest. "I don't know what the answer is...but, speaking of," he said with a glance at his watch. "I expect it's time to go and see her with dinner, Hermione."

"Err...about that, I was meaning to ask, Harry, would you be alright to switch with me? You go tonight and I'll go tomorrow?" Hermione asked. Harry raised an eyebrow suspiciously at her.

"Why? You seemed like you wanted to go and see her a few moments ago…"

"Well, then I remembered. I've got the monthly prefect conference with Professor McGonagall tonight and she'll be suspicious if I reschedule. And I've got an Ancient Runes essay due tomorrow and I still need to go to the library to get the book I need to finish a translation," she lied easily. Ron never attended the prefect conferences anyway, so he wouldn't know whether there was one tonight or not. And they also had no way of knowing Hermione'd finished her Ancient Runes essay two nights ago.

"Sure, that's fine…" Harry nodded, though he still looked a little surprised. "Just as long as I find Dean Thomas first...I've got to talk to him about replacing Katie Bell as Chaser in the next match…" He and Ron started discussing Quidditch logistics and Hermione felt a swell of relief fill her as soon as Harry agreed to switch the dates without any to do. Tomorrow was Halloween after all, and Hermione didn't want to break her promise to Bella that they'd spend it together...and Harry and Ron, well, they just wouldn't understand.

The morning of Halloween dawned sunny and unseasonably warm. Bright light washed through the windows of the castle, illuminating swirls of dust like fireflies in the corridors. She did indeed smell strong aromas of pumpkin and cinnamon heading to Defense Against the Dark Arts, but any day a feast or other enjoyable activity was scheduled seemed to make Snape behave most miserably as if in retaliation. After DADA was Potions, where Hermione received top marks on her Drought of Living Death essay. Though, to her displeasure, so did Harry. They didn't speak to each other all lesson.

By the time they made it to the feast, Ron wasn't speaking to her, either-and when she called him on it, he didn't do anything except mutter something under his breath that contained, unmistakably, the word "Krum." The only upside of this was that he and Harry were so distracted with acting like immature gits that they didn't notice her taking more food than usual for Bellatrix.

She grabbed some of the small pumpkins off the table, several caramel apples, frosted jack-o-lantern lollipops, handfuls of candy corn and a few wrapped slices of pumpkin pie in addition to the dinner food they normally stole for her. She didn't know why she was disappointed, but she wished she could do more to put on a better Halloween for Bellatrix (her day to day life in the Room of Requirement was starting to really bore her, Hermione knew) but by the time she climbed the staircase to the seventh floor that night, she was just glad to spend time with someone who wasn't angry with her about something stupid.

"Hermione!"

"Hello Bellatrix, it's lovely to see you up and around," said Hermione, although it was a bit of an understatement. Her little room had the look of a place that had decorated itself to match the rest of the castle. Live bats fluttered around the high vaulted ceiling and all the furniture was decked out with orange and black streamers. The end table had a skull resting on it and there was even a cluster of lit jack-o-lanterns in one corner.

But the real surprise to Hermione, was Bella herself. She looked like Hermione had never seen Bellatrix Lestrange look before. She had traded her usual black robes for a long dress of pumpkin-colored orange trimmed with gold along the sleeves. It was low-cut to the point of embarrassing Hermione, who was trying to keep herself from staring at the other witch's abundant cleavage spilling out over the top of it. Her hair was no longer matted and wild, but curled to elegant perfection and woven around a gold-leaf headband as if she were a harvest fairie, and her face had more color in it than Hermione had seen since before Bella's arrival at Hogwarts.

"I was starting to think you weren't going to show up for our party," she said.

"Of course, I mean...I've been looking forward to it," said Hermione, and then she realized it was true. Bellatrix laughed.

"So have I."

"I tried to bring you a bit of everything," said Hermione and as she was taking out the dinner items and treats, a simple two-person table manifested between she and the older witch, complete with a spooky, yet elegant black eyelet lace tablecloth, and a jack-o-lantern centerpiece next to a silver candelabra dripping with long caked on wax. From her bag, she produced a bottle of pumpkin juice and a bit of butterbeer, some roasted turkey, and a container with a sampling of some of the different side dishes: mashed potatoes with gravy, creamed corn, and sweet potatoes topped with caramel, brown sugar, and tiny marshmallows shaped like ghosts.

"Now that's sorted, it seems like the only thing we need is maybe some music—"As soon as Hermione said this, however, an old Victrola appeared next to the couch and started spinning an old Celestina Warbeck record by itself.

They joked and bantered with each other as they ate their way through the feast-spread, Hermione, unsurprisingly, having more fun up here with Bella than she did with the rest of the school earlier.

"Bet you weren't expecting such an eventful Halloween, hm?" Bella prompted as she drained her pumpkin juice and opened up one of the butterbeers. Hermione shook her head and swallowed her mashed potatoes before responding.

"Well, in my first year, Harry, Ron, and I knocked out a ten-foot mountain troll. And in second year, we went to a Deathday party for one of the ghosts."

"Oooh I've always wanted to go to one of those, but the ghosts were always more scared of me than I was of them, I think. How was it?"

"It was alright, I guess...except for the food-they weren't exactly used to having _living_ guests," she joked and Bella laughed. "Apparently if food is really really spoiled, the ghosts can almost taste it."

"So bring your own food, I take it," Bella said with a wink. "At least we're already used to having to do that. It is weird, though, I remember all my Halloweens at Hogwarts except for my first one...I spent time with a friend of mine instead of going to the feast, I think…"

Hermione frowned. She had a bad feeling about this "friend" considering Voldemort would have still been in school when Bellatrix was in her first year at Hogwarts. She decided a change of subject was probably in order and paused, trying to think what to talk about when she heard the next song come on.

_I took my troubles down to Madame Ruth_

_You know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth_

"Bella?"

"Hm?" The other witch turned to look at her, but her eyes were distanced and she didn't seem as happy as she'd been earlier.

_She looked at my palm and she made a magic sign_

_She said "What you need is love potion number nine"_

"Would you care to dance?" asked Hermione. She wasn't sure where the request came from and immediately felt a bit awkward...but why should she? Maybe she just wasn't used to having female friends. Lavender and Parvati were always dancing and singing along to some new Weird Sisters song or another up in the dormitory. She was friends with Ginny of course, but the redhead was more interested in sports than music.

_I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink_

"You're asking me to dance, Hermione?" Bellatrix actually threw back her head when she laughed this time, but she was smiling again-smiling like she meant it.

"Well yeah, I mean...just as friends...I didn't mean-" Hermione found herself stammering. _What else would it mean? _

"Stop fussing about, I'm just being difficult on purpose-sure, I'll dance with you-" she said, getting to her feet and gesturing for Hermione to do the same. They didn't have much room, so when Hermione was standing up next to Bella (a little taller than she was, it turned out) she found herself just staring at her.

_I didn't know if it was day or night_

_I started kissing everything in sight_

The only dancing she'd ever done was at the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum and something about taking Bella's waist felt very, very different. _Because she was a woman? Because they were just friends? Because she was older? Because she was Bellatrix Lestrange?_ When Hermione grabbed her hand, she could tell Bellatrix thought it was all a joke, which, she reminded herself, it was. But then the music stopped.

"The song is over," she said without letting go of Bella's hand or waist.

"There'll be another song," said Bellatrix. And she was right.

_I put a spell on you_

_Because you're mine_

Hermione drew Bella gently to her, their bodies only inches apart and while the younger witch had never been much for dancing, Bellatrix moved with a fluidity and grace that didn't seem to fit her crass death eater personality. They whirled around their little space with her leading and it reminded Hermione of waving her wand for a charm, swift and effortless.

_You know I love you_

_I love you_

_I love you_

_I love you anyhow_

_And I don't care if you don't want me_

_I'm yours right now_

They danced song after song together, even waltzing to some old classical number the magic victrola spewed out. It didn't feel like fooling around dancing with other Gryffindors at a common room party...it felt like dancing with Viktor at the Yule Ball. Only the things she was nervous about then were about how she looked and what people would think and first date jitters...but this...this was something else entirely. And Hermione felt like she was swimming in it while she tried to wrap her head around it at the same time.

When the last song ended and the victrola's record spun to a slow stop, Hermione brought the back of Bella's hand to her lips and kissed it and then without really thinking about it, and surprising even herself, she kissed the older witch's cheek. At this, Bellatrix laughed her cackling laugh, but did not pull completely away.

"I'm sorry, if that was off the mark...it's just, I like spending time with you, y'know?" said Hermione, trying to think of any occasion she'd ever been this flustered.

"I like it, too. You're different." Bellatrix was looking at Hermione curiously, with her head tilted to one side and her hair falling playfully over that orange dress.

"So are you." Who was she, really? Sure, she was probably just old enough to be her mother, she was a death eater, a murderer, a Slytherin, Bellatrix who was irrevocably and unhealthily obsessed with the man who resented and wanted to destroy the very existence of people like Hermione...but she was also Bella who was smart and funny and attractive, who knew the right things to say, who was strong in the face of what must seem like an impossible situation, who she really wanted to kiss again.

And even though she knew it was wrong, her dreams that night were full of, not Ron or Viktor, but Bella in her orange dress, lighting a fire in her life, and she was deeply grateful that neither Ron nor Harry could perform Legilimency.

**~And when I call**

**Will you walk gently**

**Thru my shadow**

**The ones who sing at night**

**The ones who sing at night**

**The ones you dream of**

**The ones who walk away**

**Capes pulled around them tight**

**Cryin' for the night**

**Cry for the nightbird tonight~**


	5. Chapter 5: The Ones Who Walk Away

Chapter 6: The Ones Who Walk Away

2 November.

It is the night of the first Quidditch Match of the year. Gryffindor beat Slytherin 200 points to 20, with Harry catching the snitch in record time, right under Malfoy's smug, up-turned nose. The entire team wants to head up to the common room and party with all the food they can nick from the kitchens and all the firewhiskey they can drink...and though she knows she should be studying and she has never been much for loud partying, Hermione finds herself wanting to join them. And then she is there and so is Ron and despite all the anxiety she knows he had, she can't deny that he played brilliantly. They look at each other for a long moment and then Hermione, biting her lip nervously, lets her arms fall around him and then they are kissing. But then she blinks and it's not Ron she is kissing, but Bellatrix. And then the older witch is slipping out of her tight black dress. Hermione watches the silky material gather around her waist, eyes traveling up and down the Death Eater's back, which faces her, shiny and exposed…

"Hello, Hermione. Is the DA meeting again?" Hermione stopped still in her tracks, her mix of risqué and embarrassing daydreams leaving her thoughts as quickly as if they'd been magically wiped away.

"Luna!?" The Ravenclaw girl was there sure enough, standing beside Barnabus the Barmy wearing her radish earrings and an expression of the most serene confusion.

"You, Ron and Harry have been coming here loads again...The Grey Lady told me."

"Did she?"

"She did. I was wondering if the DA was back to having meetings." Luna wasn't moving. She kept looking at Hermione with her wide eyes, always having the habit of inserting herself into conversations and situations in the bluntest of ways.

"Luna, it's not like that. Honestly, we-" the Gryffindor broke off when she heard what sounded distinctly like a cat's low growl drawing nearer. Mrs. Norris.

"Students out of bed, my sweet?"

Filch sounded far too close for Hermione's liking-probably coming up the corridor.

"Luna, come with me." She didn't have time to think. She grabbed Luna's hand and thought as desperately as she could about the Room of Requirement and the place they were keeping Bellatrix until the door materialized before them. She heard Filch's footsteps clattering just around the corner when she pulled Luna into the room and let the door shut behind her.

"This is the Room of Lost Things, isn't it?"

"Luna, I need you to keep a secret. It's very, very important." Hermione thought for a second that maybe she could get away without telling her-that maybe they could hide, for just a few moments until Filch passed by, and then leave the room...she could make up some story to keep Luna from thinking the DA was back...but she felt like that was also probably the wrong thing to do. She hadn't always been very fond of Luna-mostly because she was one of the least rational people Hermione had ever met and she believed fervently in things that didn't exist-but she had to admit the Ravenclaw had grown on her a bit over the course of the past year, and especially after what happened in the Department of Mysteries the previous June.

And hadn't she also shown bravery and nerve when she risked her life to try and save Sirius, a man she thought, up until Hermione, Ron, and Harry told her otherwise, was a convicted killer? And hadn't she successfully initiated the publishing of the interview that brought so many over to Harry's side about Voldemort being back when all the other papers sided with the Ministry?

"I'm alright at keeping secrets, I suppose. I would tell you some of the best ones I've kept-and for how long-but then I wouldn't be very good at keeping them anymore, would I?" said Luna.

"No, but the thing is...Ron, Harry and I have been coming to this room for the past few weeks but it's not for the DA...we met someone during the last trip to Hogsmeade and we brought her here to keep her safe, because right now, if she leaves this room-or if anyone knows she's here-she'll die and the lot of us will likely be expelled-and probably arrested, honestly."

"Arrested? For trying to keep someone safe-who is it? Is it that witch the Ministry of Magic has been threatening because she's been accusing Rufus Scrimgeor of being a vampire? Because that's not an accusation, Hermione, that's true." Luna was starting to move down the rows of shelves as she spoke, glancing at this and that hidden there by centuries of Hogwarts students. Hermione sighed.

"No-no, it's nothing like that. This is someone who has done a lot of bad things, horrible things, but she doesn't remember them, so right now it's like she's innocent-even though she isn't-and we don't want to remind her of any of the things in her past until we know what to do…" Hermione tried to explain without sounding like she was condescending Luna but also so that she wasn't giving too much away. But Luna didn't seem to be listening, in fact she was focusing most of her attention on an ornate comb shaped like a ladybug she'd picked up off of a nearby table.

"Luna, please, this is important-"

"I know," she said, but kept on walking ahead all the same. "I don't have to be looking at you to be hearing you. Kind of like how Ron Weasley can look right at you and not hear what you're saying at all….some people are the reverse of that-oh, Bellatrix Lestrange!"

They'd walked straight through the invisible barrier around Bellatrix's little room. And there she was, looking again different than she had yet-not that Hermione had expected her to still be wearing the orange dress. This time, she was sitting on the couch under the window, writing something in a little notebook bound in black leather with what appeared to be a raven's feather quill. Her hair was a little wet and hanging in a messy ponytail over one shoulder. Her robes tonight were lavender.

"Oh! You've brought someone!" Bella shut the journal and got to her feet, but looked otherwise unconcerned.

"I'm Luna. Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Lestrange," said Luna. And with that, she held out her hand for Bella to shake. That was the surprisingly unsurprising thing about Luna. She had a way of always being able to shock you with the things that for her, were the most natural of reactions.

"The pleasure is mine, Luna-but please, if you are a friend of Hermione's then you may call me Bella. The whole Ms. Lestrange bit makes me feel like some stuffy old crone. And I'm not old enough for that yet." Luna smiled and Bella had an amused glint in her eyes that seemed to indicate to Hermione that she at least wasn't put off by the surprise new visitor. She crossed into the room and sat next to Bellatrix on the couch while Luna sat across from them in the chair and then they were all just looking at each other.

"Would you like to play a game, Ms Bella-I imagine the boredom must get really horrid up here," said Luna.

"It does. You're very perceptive," said Bella with one eyebrow raised and (Hermione thought) a curt glance over at her. She felt herself stiffen. Had she imagined the extra intonation on 'you're?' She didn't meet either of their eyes, but heard Bella laugh in that musical way that was so nice, though in this moment, also frustrating.

"Alright. What games do you have?" Hermione asked-never knowing what to expect when it came to Luna.

"Oh, I was just thinking Exploding Snap or something. I've got a deck in my bag."

And so they played a few rounds of Exploding Snap, the wizarding card game in which players tried to choose pairs of matching cards out of a series, faster than the other players and before the cards exploded. Bella won the most, which she considered ironic because while she couldn't remember the past several years of her life, she could remember where all the cards featuring Hebridean Blacks were when they were all upside down in a lineup. Hermione singed part of an eyebrow reaching for a matched pair of Hungarian Horntail cards that exploded in exploded in her face, and Luna seemed too preoccupied with studying the artwork on the cards and their apparent symbolism to be concerned with matching any at all.

Eventually though, this too got boring, and then they were all looking at each other in silence again.

"Wrackspurts got you?" Luna asked Bellatrix and Hermione felt her face flush. What was Luna being so friendly to her for, anyway?

"What?" said Bella.

"Wrackspurts! They're invisible creatures that float around and make your brain go fuzzy!"

Hermione rolled her eyes and just barely stifled a laugh, expecting Bellatrix to be doing the same, but the older witch was eyeing Luna with apparent fascination.

"Well that makes sense, then...my brains been all sorts of fuzzy lately."

"I've got tarot, too-if you'd like a reading. The cards are great for helping you gather your thoughts," said Luna, who then proceeded to pull another, distinctly different, deck of cards out of her bag. She took them out of a battered purple box that had a mermaid on the front of it.

"Oh come on," Hermione scoffed. "You're learning that rubbish in Trelawney's class, aren't you?

"Oh no, I've got Firenze this year-and besides, this is different. It's a special deck, left to me by my mother and it's not nice of you to call it rubbish just because you may not understand it yet."

"Oh Hermione, let up. It's all in good fun and besides, what harm can it do if I don't remember hardly anything about my past anyway? Anything that might give me answers, I'll take. Even this," said Bellatrix and Hermione felt her face flush with embarrassment.

Luna slipped the cards out of their box and began shuffling them like a pack of playing cards. She then split them into four piles in a horizontal row and a fifth pile isolated from the others. She flipped them over one by one to reveal the top card on each.

"This Court card...this is you, Miss Bella. It's the Queen of Wands. The Queen of Fire." Luna pointed to the top card on the fifth pile...a woman with dark hair in an orange dress. Bella in her orange dress on Halloween.

"And this one represents your recent past. We've got the seven of swords-that's betrayal-and that's the eight of swords-that's some sort of oppression and interference-see how the swords in the picture are all crossing each other? This is probably because of what happened to you-you lost your memories-someone you trusted took them from you and now you feel trapped, not by the Room of Lost things, but by the situation. You don't know what to do and you feel a little helpless...hence the crossed swords," Luna explained. Bella looked down at the cards and frowned.

"But over here in the center...Here's where you are currently," Luna continued. "The 10 of Cups. Satiety. You're happy right now, you feel like you belong here with us." 10 golden goblets overflowing with light, set against a red and orange background.

"It's lovely, yes, to feel any sense of belonging and normalcy in the midst of all this. Hermione's other friends seem to be afraid of me for reasons I don't even understand. Maybe I used to be really horrible and terrifying before all this...Maybe I still am…"the older witch trailed off, scaling almost frighteningly close to the truth.

"Don't pay attention to other people, then," Luna replied easily. "Just trust yourself. And for what it's worth, I think you're a good person, Ms. Bella. And you're really very pretty. You've got thestral eyes."

"See this card here on the end? It's for the near future-ace of cups. That's new beginnings-especially for new relationships-look at how the cup in the picture looks like it's exploding out the top with all different colors and patterns? My mother always liked that card. She told me it means the way into the soul...that part of us that sees beauty and trust in other people." What was Luna playing at? New relationships? Way into the soul? Thestral eyes? Was she flirting with Bellatrix? It was strange, yes, but even if it were true, Hermione didn't see why it should bother her. Well, obviously it didn't bother her, she just thought it was weird. Like most of what Loony Lovegood did.

"Your mother told you that?" asked Bella.

"She did." Luna nodded as she started to pack the cards back into their box.

"You must have a good mother," said Bellatrix.

"I did have a good mother. At least, I think I did."

"Did? What happened to her?"

"She passed away when I was nine. She was the Queen of Cups whenever we pulled the cards...very artistic and did a lot of inventing...one day, one of her invented spells went badly wrong...and…" Luna trailed off. Hermione watched the interaction between them, but neither woman said anything for a good long while. Everyone was thinking. Hermione had never known that about Luna's mother. She wondered if anyone at Hogwarts did...and then...

"What, has the wrackspurt got you?" said Bella with a thin smile, and she and Luna laughed. Suddenly, Hermione got to her feet. The room had suddenly felt very warm and she needed air.

"Well, as I'm sure Filch is gone by now, I think I'm going to head back to my common room. Have a good night, you two," she said without looking at either of them and, feeling a bit like her feet were moving of their own accord, she let them guide her out of the Room of Lost Things, back through the portrait whole and the (thankfully empty) Gryffindor Common Room, and up the spiral staircase to her dormitory. Only when she'd kicked off her shoes and collapsed back onto her bed, did the full gravity of what all had just happened hit Hermione. When had she ever behaved so childishly in the face of anything let alone something like that.

She stared at the Golden Gryffindor lion emblazoned on the hanging curtains around her bed. Acting like she had...and without any logical reason...she didn't deserve to call herself a Gryffindor at the moment. And then there was the matter of Bellatrix herself, who had seemed quite alert as of late. How much did she know? And could Ron be right? Could she really have been playing them all along, just waiting for the right moment to strike? Had Hermione led Luna into a dangerous situation and then just left her there?

She took in a deep breath and then let it out in a long, slow exhale. Should she go back? No, surely they were fine. Hermione still had Bellatrix's wand, after all. But what if…suddenly, a completely different thought took hold of Hermione. Luna, wrapped around Bellatrix. Kissing her. Knowing her. No! Hermione shook her head of the thought, unsure if it was because it disturbed her or because it angered her. She sighed and reasoned that she'd simply have to hope for the best for now and then try to keep her distance from Bellatrix for a little while, at least emotionally. It was all becoming too confusing.


	6. Chapter6: Capes Pulled Around Them Tight

**Chapter 6: Capes Pulled Around Them Tight **

_3-4 November._

Harry sat with Bella the next night and Ron the night after that. Hermione was aware that in some subconscious (and even conscious) part of her mind, she'd been trying to ignore Bellatrix.

For some reason, though she struggled to push the dark witch from her mind, Bellatrix was frequently the last thought she had before falling asleep at night...and it wasn't just concern about what she might be capable of or plans to interrogate her or use her as bait for Voldemort, as Harry and Ron had suggested...no, her thoughts of Bellatrix were images of her. Playful and innocent, waiting for Hermione to bring her dinner and talk about lessons and the gossip of the day. Dancing with her in her orange dress on Halloween. Even playing Exploding Snap with her and Luna (which Hermione knew she'd overreacted about.)

And sometimes, they went deeper than that and that was what scared her. Those dreams that delved into the fantastical. Waltzing with an arm around Bella's waist instead of Viktor Krum's at the Yule Ball. Caressing her face, then leaning closer, close enough to smell her hair and that musky shampoo she used. Feeling the arch of her high cheekbones in one hand as Hermione pulled her face to her own with the other hand, kissed her, tasted her on her tongue...no. Hermione could not think this way. Why would she want to think this way? Bellatrix was a monster, after all. No. Hermione didn't want to think about that, either. What she needed was a way to get over whatever this feeling was...Whenever she thought of how much she'd fancied Ron over the summer, she felt a slight flutter in her stomach as if to remind her those feelings remained, as well.

_If Gryffindor wins the Quidditch match against Slythern, I'll kiss Ron at the after party, _she told herself resolutely on the eve of the match. And though Hermione never wanted to be like those boy crazy girls whose last thought before falling asleep was a foolish crush, Hermione forced Ron's face into the forefront of her mind as she squeezed her eyes shut as if her life depended on it.

_**-0000-00000-00000-00000-00000-00000-00000-0000-**_

The Great Hall was a roar of sound when Hermione strode to the Gryffindor table on Saturday morning. Fortunately, she had slept signficantly better than she had earlier in the week. Unfortunately, she'd once again dreamed about Bellatrix, her couch in the Room of Requirement, and doing a lot more than talking with her on it. She caught sight of Harry and Ron at the table, already in their Quidditch uniforms, and, ignoring the chorus of boos and hisses the Slytherins directed at all the Gryffindors, she strode up to join her friends.

She took a seat beside Ron, who was staring weakly into an untouched bowl of hot cereal, ignoring the jubilant cheers and excited waves from their housemates.

"Tea?" Harry was offering Ron. "Coffee? Pumpkin juice?"

"Anything," Ron said, stirring absently at his cereal.

"How are you both feeling?" Hermione asked.

"Fine," said Harry, who, to her surprise, seemed to be tipping something over the pumpkin juice he was handing Ron. A certain little gold something. "There you go, Ron. Drink up." Ron raised the glass to his lips, alarming Hermione.

"Don't drink that, Ron!"

"Why not?" Ron demanded. Hermione stared at Harry, thoroughly shocked and scandalized.

"You just put something in that drink."

"Excuse me?" said Harry.

"You heard me. I saw you. You just tipped something into Ron's drink. You've got the bottle in your hand right now!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Harry, and he made to quickly stow it in his pocket, though not before Ron caught a little glimpse of gold.

Smiling for the first time in days, Ron picked up the glass and drained it all in one gulp.

"Come on, Harry. We've got a game to win."

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A short while later, Hermione made her way up to the Gryffindor Quidditch stands with Hagrid and Neville Longbottom, who was overjoyed at the warm, sunny weather conditions. Seamus Finnegan soon joined them, regaling them excitedly with the information that apparently Slytherin's best Chaser was out of the match due to a practice injury and Draco Malfoy had called off sick, so they'd be playing their back-up Seeker.

"Wow, that's lucky!" exclaimed Neville and Hermione rolled her eyes. While she didn't approve of Harry's actions, she hoped no one found out he'd slipped Ron lucky potion or he'd be stripped of his team captaincy for sure, not to mention potentially expelled.

After both teams stepped out onto the pitch, Madam Hooch instructed the captains, Harry and a gorilla-built Slytherin 7th year called Urquhart, to shake hands. At the sound of her whistle, all the players took to the skies and the crowd erupted into cheers. Hermione watched Ron soar towards the Gryffindor goalposts with nervous anticipation.

"Well, there they go, and I think we're all surprised to see the team that Potter's put together this year. Many thought, given Ronald Weasley's patchy performance as Keeper last year, that he might be off the team, but of course, a close personal friendship with the Captain does help. . . ." the voice of Zacharias Smith from Hufflepuff oozed out of the commentator's microphone and Hermione visibly cringed. Though he'd been a member of the D.A. the previous year, it didn't keep Smith from being rude and disrespectful.

"Oh, and here comes Slytherin's first attempt on goal, it's Urquhart streaking down the pitch and —Weasley saves it, well, he's bound to get lucky sometimes, I suppose. . . ." Even though she knew it was partly (or even mostly) because he'd been given Felix Felicis, Hermione couldn't help but smile and cheer with the rest of her house when Ron made his first truly spectacular save, kicking the Quaffle across the pitch with such force that it nearly knocked a Slytherin Chaser off his broom. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Harry circling the pitch, likely looking for the Snitch.

As the match went on, Zacharias Smith took every opportunity he could muster to say rude things about Ron, Harry, and the rest of the Gryffindor team, but despite this, Ron saved every goal the Slytherins attempted and Gryffindor was leading sixty points to zero less than an hour into the game. It was like Gryffindor could do no wrong.

Ron made another great save, and Hermione couldn't help but admit that he looked really good while doing it. Then, the cheers around her went from loud to deafening. Harry had caught the Snitch. Her best friend flew a few laps around the pitch with the golden winged ball clasped in his hand for the crowd to see. She smiled. All rule-breaking aside, it was going to be a really good night.

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Music thudded on in the background when Hermione slipped through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room. The victory party was already in full swing. Two tables draped in Gryffindor tapestries were brimming with drinks-butterbeer, firewhisky, rum punch, and a variety of sweet italian sodas. Ginny and Dean lingered there, each with drinks in hand. She spotted Harry and Ron, a Creevey brother on either side of them, clearly begging for autographs and a play-by-play of the match.

"There you two are," she said and greeted each of them with warm hugs before grabbing her own frothy bottle of butterbeer. "Good job today, though, you know you shouldn't have done it, Harry."

"What are you going to do, turn us in?" demanded Ron, instantly on the defensive. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"It's alright, I'm kidding...sort of."

"I didn't spike Ron's drink with Felix Felicis if that's what you're on about," said Harry.

"Yes you did, Harry, and that's why everything went right, there were Slytherin players missing, and Ron saved everything!" Hermione exclaimed. She'd started out trying to be playful with them, but was aghast that Harry would go so far as to continue lying to her, even after the fact.

"I didn't," said Harry, who, to her astonishment, pulled the tiny bottle of Felix Felicis, still tightly corked, out of his jacket pocket. "I wanted Ron to think I'd done it, so I faked it when I knew you were looking." He looked at Ron. "You saved everything because you felt lucky. You did it all yourself." He pocketed the potion again.

"There really wasn't anything in my pumpkin juice?" Ron said, astounded. "But the weather was good . . . and Vaisey couldn't play.. . . I honestly haven't been given lucky potion?" Harry shook his head. Ron gaped at him for a moment, then rounded on Hermione, imitating her voice. "You added Felix Felicis to Ron's juice this morning, that's why he saved everything! See! I can save goals without help, Hermione!"

"I never said you couldn't — Ron, you thought you'd been given it too!" But Ron had already stormed off into a throng of seventh years offering him shots. Hermione turned back to Harry, slightly crestfallen. This wasn't how she'd wanted the night to go at all.

"It's alright," Harry offered. "He'll come 'round. We'll get a couple of drinks in him, loosen his nerve, everything'll be fine." She nodded hopefully.

"Hey, good game, Harry," said Ginny, walking up to them with Demelza Robbins. She smiled slightly as her best friend blushed as red as his Quidditch robes. He'd been crushing on Ginny for months now.

"Er...you, too."

"Have you seen Romilda Vane? She was just telling Demelza she plans to ask you to Slughorn's Christmas party."

"But she's not even invited!"

"Like that'll stop her. Maybe she thinks if she gets the rumor started, you'll ask her first," said Demelza and the four of them laughed. "But enough about Romilda, have you guys seen Ron?" she added, with a tilt of her head towards the fireplace.

"The filthy hypocrite. After all the nagging he gave me about Dean." Ginny was wide-eyed and smirking. Harry and Demelza continuing to laugh. But Hermione felt like she couldn't move as her eyes locked on Ron, in full view of the whole room, and wrapped so closely around Lavender Brown it was hard to tell whose hands were whose.

"It looks like he's eating her face, doesn't it?" said Ginny casually. "But I suppose he's got to refine his technique somehow." She helped herself to another drink and she and Demelza walked off back into the fray of the party. Hermione took a deep breath in and then slowly let it out, trying to keep herself from crying. She downed the rest of her butterbeer in one long gulp.

"Hermione-"

"Don't, Harry."

"I'm sure it's not-"

"What does it feel like," she said slowly, cutting him off again. "When you see Dean with Ginny?"

He looked taken aback.

"I know," she continued. "I see the way you look at her. You're my best friend." Her voice was starting to shake. She didn't know why this was affecting her so strongly. Hadn't she, only a couple of weeks ago, been unconvinced Ron even liked her that way? Why should she be so angry that he was snogging another girl? Maybe because of all the flack he'd been giving her about Krum. Maybe because he'd never so much as spoken to Lavender outside of lessons before. Maybe because this was coming out of nowhere, completely shattering Hermione's perfect vision of how the night was supposed to go. Maybe because Bellatrix had been so convinced she was right about Ron's feelings. _Bellatrix. _This was all her fault, really. And now, Hermione couldn't tell if she was closer to breaking down crying or exploding with rage. She barely registered the rest of the party, Harry enveloping her into a hug, finally answering her question about seeing Dean with Ginny with a quiet, "it feels like this."

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In whatever remained of the sober part of her mind, Hermione knew it was a bad idea to go and see Bellatrix, even if it was techincally her night. While trying to keep herself calm after seeing Ron and Lavender, she'd taken more than a few shots of firewhiskey and even flirted with Cormac McLaggen, while looking out of the corner of her eye to see if Ron was paying attention (he wasn't). Finally, at about half past eleven, she shoved some of the party snacks, a bottle of firewhiskey, and a couple of butterbeers into her messenger bag and angrily stalked out of the portrait hole.

"Who is it?" Hermione heard Bellatrix before she saw her, just as she rounded on the closed off little section of the Room of Requirement.

Bellatrix was perched on the windowsill, which had magically extended itself so she could stretch out comfortably, looking out over the grounds in a white silk nightgown. Her long black curls were pulled in a loose ponytail over her left shoulder and even though Hermione was angry with her, she couldn't help thinking the older witch looked prettier than she'd ever seen her.

Hermione began taking the food and drinks out of her bag and setting them down on the floor without making eye contact with Bellatrix. "Your dinner," she said stiffly. The other woman didn't get down from the windowsill.

"Hermione? Is...is everything alright?"

"Everything's excellent, really, never better." Hermione slammed a fork down next to the couple of mince pies she'd taken from the party.

"Congratulations...on the match. Gryffindor won, yes?" Bellatrix prompted. Hermione ignored her. "I suppose they couldn't have found anyone better to do the commentary? Smith was it? Seemed a bit of a nasally git to me, but as his voice was all I could hear of it all I suppose I might not be the most objective..." she trailed off. Still, Hermione did not respond. She sat down on one the armchairs, crossing her arms over her chest. She didn't even know why she was so angry. One minute Bellatrix was all she could think about, and the next, she didn't want to be anywhere near her. Maybe she and Ron had set this all up for a laugh. How dare she try to interfere in anything. How dare she invade Hermione's every dream, every passing thought, how dare she-

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to have done," the older witch said suddenly, interrupting Hermione's mental reverie. And perhaps it was the alcohol coursing through her, perhaps it was that final intrusion, but something snapped inside Hermione. Before she knew it, she was on her feet, wand out, pointing at Bellatrix's heart.

"YOU! YOU FOUL LOATHSOME, EVIL WRETCHED, GARGOYLE! I COULD FILL THE ENTIRE RESTRICTED SECTION WITH PAGES ON ALL YOU'VE DONE!" "FABULA NARRATOR!" Hermione shouted the incantation for implanting a memory into someone's mind, while thinking as hard as she could about her own memory-the night she met Bellatrix in the Department of Mysteries. She knew the witch had done far worse than torture her there, worse even than murder Sirius right in front of Harry, but right now it was the only memory Hermione had.

_Hermione is in the Department of Mysteries, standing alongside Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Luna. Harry asks about Sirius and she mocks him from beneath her hooded Death Eater robe. She and the other Death Eaters are closing in on the Hogwarts students; the light from her wand beams into Hermione's eyes. _

"_The little baby woke up fwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo," says the woman in a horrible, mock-baby voice. Lucius Malfoy tells them that if Harry hands over the prophecy he's holding, no one need get hurt. Bellatrix steps forward then, letting her hood fall away to reveal her face, pale and emaciated from her recent time in Azkaban, but still somehow sickeningly beautiful in a way she doesn't deserve and glowing with excitement at the prospect of a fight. _

"_You need more persuasion?" she says, her chest rising and falling rapidly. "Very well — take the smallest ones," she orders the Death Eaters beside her. "Let him watch while we torture the little girls. I'll take this one,"her arm snakes out from her robes and grabs Hermione. _

_...But she doesn't attack her until later, in the midst of the fighting, "Crucio!," she exclaims with what can only be called sheer joy. Hermione screams and feels her body rise into the air. The pain is almost unbearable...like small needles stabbing into every centimeter of her skin, needles dipped in flames...but the visions are worse. _

_She sees her best friends dying over and over. She feels hot pinpricks…all around her, all consuming, endless. Her body is still shaking as she falls to the floor, but there is no time to think about it, no time, she has to fight…_

_A different memory. Students crowded around their House tables in the Great Hall, anxiously scanning newspapers that have just informed them of a mass breakout at Azkaban prison fortress. A picture of a madwoman screams from the front page. _

_"The Ministry of Magic announced late last night that there has been a mass breakout from Azkaban. Speaking to reporters in his private office, Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic, confirmed that ten high security prisoners escaped in the early hours of yesterday evening...including Bellatrix Lestrange, who has been sentenced to life in prison for the torture of two prominent Ministry Aurors...Dementors have been authorized to execute the Kiss at such time these individuals are apprehended and the magical community is advised to remain on high alert," a fifth year Hermione reads aloud..._

"Ss..Stop. Please." Bellatrix was crying. Her eyes were squeezed shut and silent tears streamed down her cheeks. Hermione felt a rush of satisfaction, but it was small and only lasted a few seconds before it evaporated and left a hollow and terrible feeling in its wake as she was hit with the gravity of what she'd just done. More than the fact that it was risky, it was horrible. She wasn't even thinking about the potential risks of Bellatrix getting memories back that had worried her so much in weeks past...no, she was thinking about the woman before her who was hurt, in pain, because of something Hermione had done intentionally to hurt her-this version of her, who wouldn't understand what she'd just seen. There were so many better ways she could have told her...

"Oh no...Bella please...Bella I'm so so sorry. I don't know why I did that." She climbed up on the windowsill and put her arms around the older witch, pulling her close. Bellatrix leaned into her, resting her head against Hermione's shoulder. The Quidditch match seemed like it was months in the past.

"What did you do to me? What was that?" Bellatrix finally asked, after she might have been silent for hours. Hermione rested her chin on top of the older witch's head, breathing in the musky smell of her shampoo.

"A spell...sort of like a reverse obliviate. It's to get someone to remember or know something specific, from your own memory, the spell comes from a latin phrase meaning "tell the story," she murmured, glad she didn't have to look her in the eye. Bellatrix fell silent again, this time for so long that Hermione thought maybe she'd fallen asleep. She kept her arms the dark witch, feeling the steady rise and fall of her breaths under her palms.

"...So that was me?" Bellatrix choked out. "I did those things. And I did that...to you?"

"I didn't want you to find out this way." Hermione bit her lip.

"That's not an answer to my questions."

Not really knowing what to say, and also feeling a little bit like she was acting outside of herself (she'd been doing that a lot lately), Hermione pressed a kiss to the top of Bellatrix's head, brushing her lips against the witch's thick black hair, and she breathed out a sigh she hadn't realized she'd been holding in, as she felt Bella relax against her. All of her senses heightened. They were so close, like a scene out of one of Hermione's recent dreams. Ron and Lavender seemed a lifetime away and she tried to focus, but her brain seemed to have gone fuzzy in a way Hermione had never experienced before. But she wasn't scared...how could she be? In that moment, there was nothing but Bellatrix.

And then, suddenly, it was over as quickly as it began. Bellatrix pulled away. She shoved Hermione aside and slid back to her own end of the windowsill.

"No," she said sharply. "Don't fucking touch me. Not until you start telling me the truth. About all of it. What I saw, how it came to be, how I got here...What the hell has been going on?"


	7. Chapter 7:Crying for the Night

**Chapter 7: Crying for the Night**

_4-5 November. _

Her eyes looked almost steely now as she glared at Hermione, who just wanted to hold her again. Though just as much of the young witch wanted to run. Bella looked so much like the old Bellatrix in that moment, it was a little frightening.

"Fine," she heard herself say flatly as she got down from the windowsill. "I'll tell you what I know, but I'm having another drink first." Bellatrix rolled her eyes and crossed her legs.

"If you say so. And I will drink as well if that would make things more comfortable." Hermione didn't answer her, but she did notice two frosty tumblers materialize next to the bottle of firewhiskey from the party.

She poured their drinks and once they were situated back on the windowsill (side-by-side, but not touching) Hermione thought seriously about what to tell her...how to even _begin_ to tell her…She remembered when she was eleven years old and had just received her letter to join a world she knew nothing about. Of course, she'd had her books. Long before she even met any other witches or wizards, she'd had her books...with their names and dates and facts to wrap her in a cocoon of knowledge that felt warm, secure, safe.

"About twenty-five years ago, there was a wizard who went...about as bad as anyone can go. You were only a child, a Hogwarts student yourself, when he started to become powerful," Hermione began. She took a long sip of her firewhiskey.

"He made deals and killed hundreds of people, using fear to gain more power. At the height of his...reign, people, magical and nonmagical alike, were terrified. Scared for themselves, their families, their loved ones...Every week, news came of more deaths, disappearances, torturing...the Ministry of Magic was in disarray. They didn't know what to do and they were trying to keep everything hidden from the Muggles, but they were dying, too" Hermione tried to explain the history of the war the same way it was once explained to her, during the summer she spent with the Order of the Phoenix.

"He recruited followers who served him, also torturing and killing to follow in his example. But in the beginning it was about politics. Some wizards thinking they were better than others. They ended up declaring open revolution against the Ministry," she continued. Bellatrix hung onto every word, her amber eyes wide and focused.

"I remember my parents going to these...meetings...sometimes holding them at our house when I was home on school breaks...there were a lot of men in really nice robes smoking cigars. They would get drunk sometimes and say vulgar things to my sisters and I until we went up to bed," the older witch said, and then she took a rather large swig of drink, shivering when she swallowed it.

"And...I don't know why you did it…" Hermione went on. "Maybe you wanted to be powerful, too. Maybe you wanted to make your parents proud because they supported him...Maybe you were just scared, but you joined him and ended up getting closer to him than anyone."

"Yes...my middle sister and I had a row about something while she was still in school and I was fresh out...she didn't want me to do whatever I was doing and I didn't approve of the man she wanted to marry...bit stupid, really...but if what you say is true, then the row must have started over that." Bellatrix shut her eyes in solemn reflection, but Hermione forced herself to go on, hoping to say enough to satiate her so that they wouldn't have to talk about any of this again any time soon.

"The things you did for him were..._absolutely horrible_...but you did them...and in time became just as feared as he was. You were one of the most wanted criminals at large and aurors had permission to bring you in dead or alive. Eventually, the evil wizard was...defeated...by his opposition, and you went to prison...as a...war criminal." Hermione didn't mention that You-Know-Who was back. Didn't mention any of the key players in the war by name, the chosen one prophecy, or Harry's significance to it all. Didn't mention the Longbottoms or Sirius Black...because she didn't know what would happen to either of them if she told her the whole truth.

Bellatrix didn't say anything for a while. Just kept on sipping at her drink and refilling it when her glass was empty as Hermione felt the weight of all she _had_ told her beginning to press in. The magnitude of the death eater knowing _anything_ would always be too great, Harry had said.

"And...then what?" Bellatrix said finally. The other witch was getting a little drunk, Hermione realized. Her eyes were getting glassy, less intimidating, and her speech was a bit slurred. Hermione, on the other hand, felt like she'd completely sobered up. Perhaps it was the adrenaline of all this.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't patronize me, Hermione."

"Then...nothing, really. You escaped from prison, that's what the newspaper article in the memory was about, you and I had a brief and not too pleasant meeting, as you saw in the memories...then, a few months later, Harry, Ron, and I found you injured in Hogsmeade with your memories gone. Your guess is as good as any of ours how it happened, but since none of us know, we've been keeping you here. If you go out, you'll just get arrested again, or worse, killed by whoever tried to hurt you in the first place." _Or worse, s_he'd said. And she found with mixed anxiety and warmth, that she hadn't been lying and she hadn't misspoke. She did not want Bellatrix Lestrange to die..._no, you don't want Bella to die...Bellatrix Lestrange can die and stay dead, just like her victims…_

"Are...are you t-trying to find out?" the other witch hiccuped, interrupting Hermione's thoughts.

"Find out what?"

"Who's after me. I can't stay here forever-I can ta-take care of...myself." She drank the last of the firewhiskey straight out of the bottle and then set it down shakily beside her.

"I know that, but...I'm scared for you," Hermione admitted. "_I _don't want anything bad to happen to you."

"Wh...why? I though' I was some kinda monster?" she slurred again as she said this and Hermione put an arm around her so she wouldn't slip off the windowsill. Despite the seriousness of the conversation, a layer of warmth seemed to settle around Hermione as soon as they were again touching.

"Okay. Well, what if there was a person you met who you knew had done a lot of bad things, and then you met the same person again and they'd completely changed and were really kind?"

"Hmmmmm," Bellatrix murmured and slumped against the other witch. "Hermione, why was I so cruel to you? What was going on in that room full of...were they crystal balls?"

"It doesn't matter," the younger witch said quickly. Bellatrix could never find out any more details about what happened at the Ministry, or her long held blood prejudice. There was a part of Hermione that knew this intrinsically.

"D...does matter."

"I think that's enough for one night. You should get some rest." Hermione guided her off the windowsill and over towards the bed. She pulled back the blanket and sheet and helped Bellatrix settle under them. She was turning around to head for the armchair she normally fell asleep in, when she felt a hand on one of her wrists.

"No, stay," Bellatrix whispered.

"I was planning to."

"No. I mean stay-with me-not on the bloody chair." Then, Hermione realized what the other witch was implying. As with most things that involved Bellatrix, there was a twinge of Hermione that thought it was a bad idea, and yet the offer was also entirely tempting. Like a scene from one the dreams Hermione was most scared to admit to-even to herself. She reasoned that one night couldn't hurt. And maybe if she indulged this strange desire, the dreams would even stop.

With a sigh of resignation, Hermione kicked off her shoes and slipped into bed beside Bellatrix. Hermione felt a shiver course through her that had nothing to do with feeling cold. In fact, it was actually quite warm-really warm. And the bed was much more comfortable than the chair would have been...more comfortable, even than her own bed in Gryffindor Tower. She felt herself sinking into the soft sheets, focusing on keeping to her own side of the bed-but then the other witch seemed to edge closer to Hermione.

"Where are you?" Bellatrix murmured.

"Right here," said Hermione. She was lying on her back, somehow finding herself trying to remember how to breathe properly even though she didn't think she was nervous. Bellatrix seemed to roll into her, settling her head into the crook of Hermione's shoulder. The younger witch didn't know how to respond. She was surprised, but also didn't want to move. Then, she remembered how much Bellatrix had to drink. She was just confused. And also, understandably, really lonely. There wasn't anything wrong with comforting her a little..._just for tonight. _

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Sunday morning dawned just as sunny and bright as the previous day, and the light reflecting off the frost-crusted grounds shone all the more brilliantine through the high windows of the room of requirement. It was this light that first roused Hermione and she blinked a few times as she tried to get her bearings. It was then that she realized she'd fallen asleep in a bed that was not her own. And that there was something very warm and sweet smelling pressed against her.

"Hermione?" Bellatrix started to sit up, blinking heavily at the bright sunlight just as she had. "Bloody hell...I feel like shit," she said and immediately laid back down, but instead of her pillow, she laid her head against Hermione's chest.

"I'd expect after drinking almost a whole bottle of firewhiskey you would," the younger witch replied. "Would you like me to go and get you a hangover potion or something?" Hermione felt Bellatrix shake her head no.

"But I've got to-"

"Do what? It's Sunday, isn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose you're right…" Hermione felt her arm subconciously tighten across the back of the older witch, who may or may not have remembered their conversation from the night before.

"We'll talk again, yes?" Bellatrix prompted, as if reading her thoughts.

"Of course, we talk almost every day."

"Merlin's sake, you know what the hell I mean. Every time we discuss my past, you tell me you've said all you know...until the next time, when you remember more somehow. I figure if we keep talking about it, we'll have all the pieces eventually," she said, with far more awareness than Hermione would have expected from someone who'd had so much to drink she felt ill. Her tone was a bit harsh, but she couldn't have been too angry, because she kept her head on Hermione's chest and continued lying close to her.

"I'll go to the library. Maybe I can find some pictures of your family somewhere, would you like that?" Hermione offered. She felt Bellatrix nod against her.

"It can't hurt. I mean, if it's as you say and someone did take my memories, it's not like I'm going to be able to remember anything without getting the memories back...but I suppose if I could relearn who I was, then that's the next best thing. It would make my time here less of a waste, I suppose." The other witch's words made sense to her at first, but her last comment stung Hermione in a way she couldn't quite express. A waste? She knew it probably wasn't meant offensively-and was probably in reference to the time Bellatrix spent up here on her own with nothing much to do, but still, it disappointed Hermione for some indiscernible reason. She felt her arm loosen around Bella's back, an action which didn't go unnoticed by the older witch.

"Please don't be afraid of me."

"I'm not-"

"My apologies if this is a little much for you. I'm trying to be patient, which, from what you've told me and shown me, and what I remember from my early childhood, seems to have always been something I've struggled with...but you're one of the only people I have to interact with right now, and being close...like this..is of great comfort to me. I hoped it was for you as well."

"So you're only close to me because I'm all who's available?"

"That's not what I meant...I'm not good at talking about anything like this...it feels weak in some way-no, that was wrong to say, too-Hermione! Don't be like that, come off it!" Bellatrix sounded genuinely upset as Hermione slid from the bed.

Thinking once more of Ron and how, for the second time in 24 hours, she'd let her expectations of a situation irrationally lead her on in some capacity-something typically unlike her-Hermione felt her eyes well up with tears. Fortunately, she was spared having to answer Bellatrix by the sound of approaching footsteps. Harry had arrived with breakfast.

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The next few weeks passed by fairly uneventfully. Hermione still went to see Bellatrix on her scheduled nights, and though the two women were perfectly friendly and cordial with each other, it was with an air of walking on eggshells and neither one of them brought up the night after the Quidditch match, its subsequent morning, or much about Bellatrix's past. Ron was now spending almost of all his time with Lavender Brown, and had relinquished his evenings in the Room of Requirement to Hermione, as well. To honor her previous offer, Hermione checked out several books on Wizarding History and the Sacred Wizarding Families for Bellatrix to peruse. (Though she was careful to only select books that did not overtly concern Voldemort or were published before his rise to power).

Then, December arrived seemingly overnight and with it, the prospects of the next Hogsmeade weekend, Slughorn's party, and the Christmas holidays, were all on the horizon.

The morning of the trip itself, Saturday December 2nd, dawned face-bitingly cold and howling with snow and sleet, not entirely unlike the weather the previous Hogsmeade weekend, when Hermione, Harry, and Ron had first discovered Bellatrix unconcious in the village. It was hard to believe, in some respects, that just over a month had passed since then. Though at the same time, it felt like Bellatrix had always lived in the Room of Requirement, since she'd become such a significant part of their daily lives. So much so that Hermione had signed up to stay at Hogwarts for the Christmas holidays with her. ("She'll need someone to bring her food, and besides, staying here beats going to Won-Won's," she'd told Harry in the library the other night.) Harry and Ron were going to the Burrow for the holidays and since she and Ron hadn't exactly mended fences, he was tossing around the idea of bringing Lavender home to meet his parents. And Hermione had no intention of spending Christmas watching the two of them snog.

Besides, not even Bellatrix deserved to be completely alone during the holidays. Well, maybe the old version, but not new Bella. Hermione even found herself hoping that under the influence of some more firewhiskey from the holiday feast, they might get close again. Emotionally, of course. (_...and physically_, her inner voice liked to remind her, but she tried not to listen).

She set out from the school a little after breakfast with Harry and Ginny. It was no surprise that Ron was nowhere to be seen-he was probably already tucked into a secluded corner of Madam Puddifoots tea shop with Lavender-but what was a little unexpected was Luna catching up with them just outside Hogsmeade village.

"Lovely day," she remarked in such a spacey tone that Hermione couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or serious. Ginny chortled. Luna was wearing her Ravenclaw scarf and cloak and her usual raddish earrings, but there was something a bit off about her. Something it took Hermione a minute to place.

"Luna...are you...wearing lipstick?"

"I am, actually. How does it suit me?" Luna replied. It was a gentle mauve-neither truly purple nor pink, and it gave her otherwise pale face a nice splash of color. Hermione had to admit it did look quite good, and she told Luna as much.

"It's nice, did that come from _her_?" she asked, and then with a hasty glance in Ginny's direction, instantly regretted it. As far as she knew, Ginny didn't know about Bellatrix, but the redhead didn't seem to have been paying attention-she was deep in discussion with Harry about something Quidditch related.

"It did, actually. She's been teaching me about makeup. It's a lot more like drawing than I ever would have expected," said Luna. Hermione nodded slowly and realized they'd reached Hogsmeade's main street, a stretch of snow-dusted cobblestone bustling with Hogwarts students and holiday shoppers. Harry suggested that since they all had Christmas shopping to do, they all break off for a bit to get it done and then reconvene for a butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks in an hour or so. Hermione headed in the direction of Dervish and Banges to look for a present for Harry. She was a bit disappointed to see that Luna appeared to be heading the same way.

"You're off to Dervish and Banges as well?"

"No, Scrivenshaft's, actually. They sell tarot cards there. I was thinking about getting some for Miss Bella for Christmas," the blonde said casually enough, but it stirred something within Hermione. Getting the older witch a Christmas gift was something Hermione had considered, but still wasn't sure about.

"So you're still seeing a lot of her then?"

"I like to go and see her sometimes when I have breaks between classes. She's very fascinating to talk to. And she's nicer to me than most of the other students here...do you mind that I go and see her?"

"Mind? Why would I mind?"

"Because you fancy her, don't you?" Luna asked and stated and assumed all at once.

"Fancy her? I mean, she's alright and she's a friend...I think...but..."

"You didn't say no."

"But I also didn't say yes." Hermione felt herself growing increasingly flustered despite herself.

"Maybe you don't know. That's fine and a perfectly reasonable answer." Luna shrugged.

"Then why did you ask?" Hermione pressed. Luna seemed to be a few steps ahead of her somehow and Hermione walked faster to catch up.

"No reason, I just wondered. You act differently whenever she comes up in conversation...whenever you talk about her...it's quite sweet," Luna remarked casually, like she'd merely asked Hermione what Bertie Botts flavor she liked best.

"But I don't like-"

"Women? Older women?"

"Well, I was going to say I don't like death eaters, but in answer to your question, I guess I've never really thought about it. I mean does it really matter what someone's gender is or if they're older if you like who they are? If you connect with them?" Hermione pushed a few strands of hair out of her eyes. Luna was still smiling serenely, but with her eyebrows slightly raised like she was sure she knew something Hermione didn't.

"So you do like her."

"No, I just meant in general, and I didn't mean 'no, I don't like her,' of course I like her, I just don't know if I like her in the way that you mean…"

"You're doing it again."

"What?"

"The sweet thing. And you're blushing redder than your Gryffindor scarf."

Hermione didn't know what to say to that so she turned away and the two of them walked in silence for a couple of minutes. Then, just as she knew Luna was about to turn off into Scrivenshaft's, something occurred to the Gryffindor.

"Luna...do you fancy her?"

"Does it matter to you if I do?"

Whatever Hermione might have been expecting her to answer, it wasn't that. The sixth year still felt her cheeks flushing crimson when she entered Dervish and Banges magical equipment shop. And she was distracted the entire time she looked for a Christmas present for Harry (eventually settling on a fascinating-looking book of unusual, lesser-known spells that might hopefully distract him from the Prince's). All the while, she couldn't get her conversation with Luna out of her head.

Would it bother her if Luna fancied Bellatrix? _Yes. Absolutely, _she'd decided almost immediately. _Why? _She asked herself, and the answer that filled her mind should have surprised her more than it did-_I'm the one who got close to her. If anyone's going to fancy her, shouldn't it be me? _Would it bother her if Bellatrix preferred Luna's company? _Yes, _she decided this almost immediately also, and vowed not only to start being kinder to the older witch, but to find her the perfect Christmas gift.


	8. Cry for the Nightbird, Tonight

_13 December_

"Hermione, we need to talk about Slughorn's Christmas party," said Harry, sitting next to Hermione in the library one Wednesday evening in December.

"What about it?" she replied, trying to sound casual as she flipped through a particularly old copy of Magica Medica for Herbology.

"It's in two days. And, well, I know you were originally going to take Ron…" Harry trailed off. Hermione bit down on her lower lip a little more fiercely than she'd intended. Yes, she had originally planned on taking Ron to the Christmas party, but that was before. It wasn't even his going out with Lavender that bothered her so much now, as it was the nasty things Ron had to say about her as if to prove to Lavender that there'd never been anything going on between them. Why did he feel like he had to prove anything? He and Hermione had only ever just been friends.

"Ron's at perfect liberty to date whoever he likes. I really couldn't care less," she whispered. Madam Pince, the formidable librarian, was stacking books only a few tables over. She accidentally dotted an i so ferociously that she punctured a hole in her essay on the medicinal properties of Mallow. She was frustrated. But not even really about Ron, she realized. Her feelings surrounding Bellatrix weren't fading away with time. If anything, they were increasing. She felt her cheeks flush like they always did when she thought of the older witch. She sighed loudly, then tried to cover it up with a cough, but Harry hadn't even noticed. He was bent over his stupid Half Blood Prince textbook.

"And incidentally," said Hermione, recovering herself. "You need to be careful."

"For the last time," said Harry, "I am not giving back this book, I've learned more from the Half-Blood Prince than Snape or Slughorn have taught me in —"

"I'm not talking about your stupid so-called Prince," she snapped. "I'm talking about earlier. I went into the girls' bathroom just before I came in here and there were about a dozen girls in there, including that Romilda Vane, trying to decide how to slip you a love potion. They're all hoping they're going to get you to take them to Slughorn's party, and they all seem to have bought Fred and George's love potions, which I'm afraid to say probably work —"

"Why didn't you confiscate them then?!"

"They didn't have the potions with them in the bathroom. They were just discussing tactics. As I doubt whether even the 'Half-Blood Prince'" — she put the ridiculous title in dramatic air quotes— "could dream up an antidote for a dozen different love potions at once, I'd just invite someone to go with you, that'll stop all the others thinking they've still got a chance. It's just two days away, they're getting desperate."

"Well, seeing as I couldn't ask the person I really wanted to go with," Harry replied bitterly and Hermione knew he was thinking of Ginny. "...I've already asked someone else to go with me. You know, just as a friend."

"Really? Who?" This development was news to Hermione.

"Oh, you know…" Harry trailed off turning redder than Hermione did when she thought about Bellatrix. "...Luna Lovegood."

Hermione stifled a snort and then was immediately disappointed in herself. Luna had never done anything rude to her personally and even if she might be bonkers (and spending too much time with Bellatrix for anyone's own good) Hermione didn't need to bully or make fun of her like everyone else did. And, sensing Harry's embarrassment, she decided not to press the topic further.

"Well, even still..just be careful what you drink, because Romilda Vane looked like she meant business." she said, turning back to her Herbology essay. Mallow's official Latin name was 'Althea Officinalis.' 'Althea' came from the Greek 'Altho,' which meant 'to cure.'

"Hang on a moment," Harry said suddenly. "I thought Filch had banned anything bought at Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?"

"And when has anyone ever paid attention to what Filch has banned?" Hermione mused. Mallow was a common ingredient in cough potions, which she'd learned from Snape years ago, but it was also traditionally used in...love potions. Of course. She stifled another laugh.

"But I thought all the owls were being searched. So how come these girls are able to bring love potions into school?" Harry pressed on.

"Fred and George send them disguised as perfumes and cough potions. It's part of their Owl Order Service."

"You know a lot about it," he said. Hermione shot him a rude look and accompanying hand gesture in reply.

"Honestly. It was all on the back of the bottles they showed Ginny and me in the summer. I don't go around putting potions in people's drinks . . . or pretending to, either, which is just as bad. . . ." she said darkly, with a nod in Harry's direction when she referenced his fake-dosing Ron with Felix Felicis.

"Yeah, well, never mind that. The point is, Filch is being fooled, isn't he? These girls are getting stuff into the school disguised as something else! So why couldn't Malfoy have brought the necklace into the school — ?"

"Oh, Harry . . . not that again . . ." she sighed. If she had a butterbeer for every time Harry brought up Draco Malfoy, she'd be drunker than Professor Trelawney.

"Come on, why not?" demanded Harry.

"Look, Secrecy Sensors detect jinxes, curses, and concealment charms, don't they? They're used to find Dark Magic and Dark objects. They'd have picked up a powerful curse, like the one on that necklace, within seconds. But something that's just been put in the wrong bottle wouldn't register — and anyway, love potions aren't Dark or dangerous —"

"Easy for you to say," interrupted Harry. Hermione rolled her eyes and continued.

"— so it would be down to Filch to realize it wasn't a cough potion, and he's not a very good wizard, I doubt he can tell one potion from —" she stopped when she heard a sudden noise behind her. A rustling of book pages followed by the sound of heels clacking briskly towards them across the stone floor from amidst the sea of shelves. Then, Madam Pince appeared. Her birdlike face and long, beaky nose lit ominously by the light of the lantern she carried.

"The library is now closed," she said. "Mind you return anything you have borrowed to the correct — what have you been doing to that book, you depraved boy?"

"It isn't the library's, it's mine!"

"Despoiled! Desecrated! Befouled!"

Hermione watched with mild amusement as Harry and Madam Pince struggled over the Half Blood Prince copy of Advanced Potion Making. She finished packing her things just as Harry was tugging the book back out of Madam Pince's grasp and she decided this had gone on for long enough. Grabbing Harry by the wrist, she led him from the library

"I don't understand! It's just a book that's been written on!" said Harry

"She'll ban you from the library if you're not careful. Why did you have to bring that stupid book?"

"It's not my fault she's barking mad, Hermione. Or d'you think she overheard you being rude about Filch? I've always thought there might be something going on between them. . . ."

"Oh, ha ha . . ." Once they were safely back in the corridor and could speak normally again, they made their way upstairs bemusedly arguing about whether or not Filch and Madam Pince were secretly in love with each other.

When they reached the seventh floor, Hermione turned left in the direction of the Gryffindor common room at the top of the stairs, but Harry turned right, she knew, because he was headed for the room of requirement.

"Wait! Hermione! I forgot--the whole reason I asked you about the Christmas party was because we've got to figure out who you're going to go with."

"Me? Why?" she asked in surprise, turning in Harry's direction. After heading back towards her, he lowered his voice back to a library-level whisper.

"Because between you and I, Lavender's already starting to drive Ron a bit mad. Depending on who you ask, you've got a really good chance at making him jealous."

"Funny of you to assume I'm not already going with someone," she snapped, reminded unpleasantly of the Yule Ball and instantly feeling defensive.

"Really? Who are you taking?"

"It's a surprise," she hissed, and stomped away towards the common room before he could ask again.

Just like in the fourth year, everyone assumed Hermione couldn't possibly have gotten a date. She seethed over this and her frustration was coupled with a mild panic because she hadn't actually asked anyone to the party. Between N.E.W.T. coursework, Bellatrix, and the daily news reports of deaths, disappearances, and everything horrible going on in the world, the party could not have been further from her mind recently. And between Ron and Lavender making out in front of the fireplace and a group of third years playing Exploding Snap, she could barely focus on anything, so she decided it'd be best to go to bed early and mull everything over with some fresh perspective and a new day.

Hermione skipped breakfast Thursday morning to finish her Herbology essay back in the library. Her Arithmancy class was succeeded by double Ancient Runes and by the time she sat down in the Great Hall for lunch, she still hadn't had much time to think. She turned in her Mallow essay in Herbology, where Professor Sprout told the class they'd be moving into a specialized study of dangerous and restricted herbs after the holiday break.

It was on the way inside to dinner that it happened. Hermione was one of the last people out of Greenhouse 4, wanting to give Ron and Lavender (and even Harry) a head start into the castle. She struck up a conversation with Professor Sprout about some of the plants they'd be working with come January ("Oh, the usual N.E.W.T. fan favorites--damiana, hemlock, henbane, datura, belladonna of course…") while the rest of the class cleared out. What she didn't intend, was to be entering the castle at the same time as the group of bedraggled seventh years coming up from the Quidditch pitch with their broomsticks slung over their shoulders. She rolled her eyes when she recognized one of them as Cormac McLaggen, but then a sudden idea struck her.

"Hey Cormac!" she greeted with a beaming smile and a feigned conventionally girlish cheerfulness that felt foreign to her.

"Oi! Granger! What's up?" Cormac turned to her and a few of his mates sniggered, but he waved them on ahead of him.

"Do you have plans tomorrow night?" she heard herself ask in that horrible fake cheerful voice. It was forward, sure, but then again she didn't want to drag this out any longer than she needed to.

"Last night before break? Probably knock back a bit of firewhiskey in the common room and see what's going on 'round the castle, you?"

"I'm going to Slughorn's Christmas party...and we're meant to bring someone. Would you like to go with me?" she asked and she hated the way he looked almost...triumphant...when he nodded his head yes. She mostly tuned out as they went over the details--he'd meet her at 8 in the common room, then they'd pregame a bit and head down to the party from there. He asked her if she wanted to hang out after dinner as well, but she made it clear she had a lot of work to finish before the break and hurried off to the Great Hall to grab dinner for herself and Bellatrix.

The older witch was a rather amusing sight to behold when Hermione arrived in her area of the Room of Requirement. She was sprawled out on the center carpet on her stomach, scribbling on a piece of parchment while the enchanted victrola in the corner played what sounded like the Weird Sisters. Her curls were thick and full as ever and draped over one shoulder of a very tight-fitting red dress.

"Bella, what are you doing?"

"Good evening to you, too, Miss Granger," said Bellatrix cooly, but with a hint of a playful smirk.

"Since when do you talk to me like you're one of my professors?"

"Since you started always speaking to me like I'm doing something wrong," she said, grinning sardonically. "At any rate, I was just mapping out my family tree based on that old book of wizarding genealogy you brought up the other day."

"Oh? You're finding it enlightening, then?"

"Sure, it's enlightening. Would be nice if it had anyone from this century in it, but I suppose I shouldn't be too picky. Not like I have much else of interest to read...anyway, I'm bored with this now--have you got any fun ideas?" Bellatrix yawned, as if for effect.

"Not particularly.But it might interest you to know that I've just asked Cormac McLaggen to Professor Slughorn's Christmas party with me," said Hermione rather abruptly. She didn't know why she thought this news would interest Bellatrix nor did she know how she would have preferred the older witch react. What she didn't expect was for Bellatrix to crinkle her nose in relative disinterest and hardly look up from her dinner.

"Who the fuck is that? Anyone I'd know?" she muttered.

"Probably not. He's a seventh year Gryffindor. He tried out for the Keeper position on the Quidditch team, but--"

"Let me guess. He tried out for Keeper and outplayed Ronald Weasley, but due to the magical interference of a particularly gifted witch who tries to hide her cunning between the pages of books, he was unsuccessful in reaching his goal. Yet he remains the perfect candidate to agitate the jealousy of the reigning Keeper." Bellatrix yawned again, but it didn't seem to be put on this time.

"Umm..yes, actually. That's kind of exactly how it went. How did you know?"

"I completed my teenage years and my Hogwarts education already, Miss Granger. Sometimes these things amuse me, other times I feel a bit pathetic that I exist in such circumstances when the only goings on require investing myself in the petty drama and gossip of sixteen year olds." Bellatrix laughed sarcastically and Hermione frowned.

"I'm sorry. I suppose I just thought I'd let you know. For conversation's sake. And for the record, I'm seventeen. I came of age in September." Hermione tried not to let on how much she felt stung by Bellatrix's latest view of things. But she also didn't fault her. Bellatrix was in her thirties. Of course she wouldn't want to only hear about school and relationship drama all the time. Hermione was fifteen years younger and already over it all, herself.

"Don't be offended, dearie. You're better than all this and all of them, you know. You don't have to meet them at their level to fit in." She winked, her tone instantly a little more warm. Hermione felt herself blush.

"A month ago you were encouraging me to pursue Ron, now you think I'm too good for him."

"That was before I got to know you quite so well. And I don't just think you're too good for him--I know you are."

Friday morning dawned overcast and snowy. In Transfiguration class, Professor McGonagall introduced the sixth year N.E.W.T. students to the concept of human transfiguration (which would be much the focus of spring term) with a fun exercise in changing the color of their eyebrows. Ron of course, failed disastrously at his first attempt and ended up somehow giving himself a handlebar mustache. She laughed, of course (as did the rest of the class), but of course, Ron retaliated with what was clearly meant to be a rude impersonation of Hermione raising her hand to answer a question. Lavender and Parvati laughed hysterically over it, and Hermione sunk lower in her chair, biting her lip and trying to resist the urge to jinx the lot of them. Just ignore them, she intoned under her breath, as Bellatrix's words echoed in her mind, _"I don't just think you're too good for him--I know you are...You're better than all this, you know…" _

The rest of the last day of classes before the holiday break seemed to drag on and fly by at the same time, and before Hermione knew it, it was time to have dinner and then get ready for the party. By the time she arrived at the Gryffindor table, Lavender and Ron were already wrapped around each other, with Harry and Parvati sitting on either side of them looking bored and somewhat embarrassed. It was then that she decided she couldn't resist 'meeting them at their level,' just for a moment or two. She hitched onto her face the largest grin she could muster as she approached Parvati.

"Hi, Parvati!" she said, ignoring Ron and Lavender completely. "Are you going to Slughorn's party tonight?"

"No invite...I'd love to go, though, it sounds like it's going to be really good. . . . You're going, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm meeting Cormac at eight, and we're —" There was a noise like a plunger being withdrawn from a blocked sink and Ron surfaced. Hermione acted as though she had not seen or heard anything. "— we're going up to the party together."

"Cormac?" said Parvati. "Cormac McLaggen, you mean?"

"That's right," said Hermione sweetly. "The one who almost" — she put a great deal of emphasis on the word — "became Gryffindor Keeper."

"Are you going out with him, then?" asked Parvati, wide-eyed.

"Oh — yes — didn't you know?" said Hermione, unable to resist a giggle.

"No!" said Parvati, in shock. "Wow, you like your Quidditch players, don't you? First Krum, then McLaggen . . ."

"I like really good Quidditch players," Hermione corrected her, still smiling. "Well, see you . . . Got to go and get ready for the party. . . ." She couldn't help but feel a burst of satisfaction upon walking away from the table, knowing the stir she'd likely caused. Really, it served them right for making fun of her earlier. Yet, in light of all of her teasing people with the information she was going out with Cormac, she sighed when she realized it was actually time to go out with Cormac.

She chose a rose pink sleeveless dress that cinched at the waist and had a generously plunging V-neck. With the aid of a series of spells and a little bit of potion, she styled her bushy hair into gentle, wavy curls. A crystal necklace completed her outfit--delicate faceted kunzite and rose quartz in sterling silver--a gift from some great aunt or another one Christmas and not something she'd normally wear, but it matched the dress and seemed to suit the occasion.

Hermione headed down to the common room a few minutes before 8 to meet Cormac, just after putting the finishing touches on her makeup. She murmured a quick balancing charm to help with walking in the light mauve heels she'd put on--souvenirs of the trip to Paris she'd taken with her family a couple summers back--they weren't particularly high, but would still take a little getting used to.

Cormac was waiting already--surprisingly, looking the part of a gentleman in sleek black dress robes--unsurprisingly, accompanied by a couple of his mates, all with drinks in their hands.

"Ayyy, there she is!" Cormac beckoned Hermione over to him, and when she was within reach, pulled her into a half-hearted embrace that led him to kiss her sloppily on the corner of her mouth. She sighed in exhasperation that he must have mistaken for arousal, because he laughed and winked at her.

"More where that came from later on, my little minx. First, you've got to try this Elixir d'Anvers Andre's uncle sent him from Belgium." Cormac offered her a glass of the sweet-smelling stuff with a nod towards his pretentious friends, and, rolling her eyes, Hermione accepted. It was going to be a long night.

\--

Music was already thudding away in the background of Slughorn's office when Hermione and Cormac arrived at a quarter of nine. Though the office had obviously been magically expanded to accomodate everyone, it still felt full with people and Hermione craned her neck looking around for Harry and Luna.

The ceiling and walls had been draped with emerald, crimson, and gold hangings, so that it looked as though they were all inside a vast tent. The room was crowded and stuffy and bathed in the red light cast by an ornate golden lamp dangling from the center of the ceiling in which real fairies were fluttering, each a brilliant speck of light. A hazy mist of pipe smoke and hookah drifted over and through the crowd, looking misty pink in the red light.

No sooner had Cormac gone off to get drinks than Hermione heard an airy "hello," behind her. She turned on her heel to see Luna. Only she didn't look like her usual strange self. Bellatrix had clearly had a say in Luna's attire--a snugly fit silver dress with a plunging neckline and sparkles that shone like constellations when she moved (_so much for not getting involved in 'petty' Hogwarts business, Bella…_) Her blonde hair was curled into wavy, loose Bellatrix-esque ringlets and the dark plum lipstick and thick eyeliner she was wearing (along with iridescent glitter streaked across her face) gave her a mature, yet ethereal look. Like a cross between a wintery goddess and the Muggle singer, David Bowie. Hermione swallowed. Luna looked...absolutely stunning.

"Oh. Hello Luna...where's Harry?"

"Oh, Professor Slughorn drug him off somewhere to meet the vampire."

"Vampire?"

"Yes, his name is Sanguini. I was quite disappointed. I thought for sure when he said there was a vampire at the party, he meant Rufus Scrimgeour…" Luna trailed off. Hermione barely stifled a giggle. All the fancy clothes and makeup in the world couldn't make Luna any less Luna.

"Rufus Scrimgeour -isn't- a vampire, Luna."

"That's what they want you to think...My father wrote a very long article about it when Scrimgeour first took over for Cornelius Fudge, but he was forced not to publish by somebody from the Ministry. Obviously, they didn't want the truth to get out…" Luna said, but without her usual force of conviction. That was when Hermione noticed the clear, crystal-encrusted goblet in her hand, half-full with an opaque green liquid.

"Luna...what's that you're drinking? Is that…"

"Absinthe. Drink to meet the Green Fairy."

Hermione was fortunately (or unfortunately) spared a need to respond to the strangeness by Cormac's return, with two glasses of the same green liquid Luna was drinking. Hermione took one of the goblets and stared into it furtively. A sweet, yet very strong smell like fennel and licorice drifted up to her and she felt herself grimace.

"Never had absinthe before, Granger?" Cormac prompted with a grin that revolted her.

"No, I haven't...this can't be real absinthe, right? It's supposed to be really strong…"

"It's Slughorn, what do you think?" he said, winking at her. Hermione took a few sips of the stuff for good measure, then promptly set the glass down on a nearby table. She frowned as Luna drained her glass and went back over to the bar, seemingly to get another. She hadn't known Luna to be much for drinking...and especially not one to drink something this strong.

"Good evening, Hogwarts! We are Dracula's Wedding and we're here to rock out your Christmas party tonight!" a loud, raspy voice shouted into a microphone in the far right corner. A group of musicians all in black leather jackets and wearing a copious amount of black and white facepaint flanked a guitar, a bass, a keyboard, and a drum set, respectively.

"All former students of mine!" Professor Slughorn shouted from somewhere in the room, as the band started playing "Feed My Chimaera." Hermione had intended to wait for Luna to return, but before she knew it, Cormac was taking her hand and dragging her towards the dance floor, closer to the band.

He pulled her against him almost instantly, grinding their bodies together to the beat of the music,

_Bring you to a simmer_

_Right on time_

_Run my greasy fingers_

_Up your greasy spine_

Cormac's hands were lower on her waist than Hermione would have liked and she shut her eyes, losing herself in the misty pink smoke and the smell of sweet vanilla hookah, counting down the minutes until this would all be over, pretending, again her better judgment, that it was Bellatrix she was dancing with.

_Feed my Chimaera_

_Meet my libido_

_He's a psycho_

_Feed my Frankenstein_

_Hungry for love_

_And it's feeding time_

At some point towards the end of the song, Luna reappeared. And reappeared was exactly the right word for it, too...she was just there again all of a sudden, in front of Hermione and Cormac, somehow in the midst of the crowd, but dancing entirely by herself. She was in her own world, tossing her hair around and murmuring the words of the song to herself softly. Hermione never would have guessed Luna listened to heavy rock music, but she seemed to be learning new things about the Ravenclaw girl by the minute tonight. Another song started and Luna kept dancing without pause, like she knew this song, too, or just didn't care. The glass of absinthe in her hand sloshed over the lip of it, occasionally spattering over, but she didn't seem to notice.

_It was on a street so evil_

_So bad that even hell disowned it_

_Every single step was trouble_

_For the fool who stumbled on it_

_Eyes within the dark were watching_

_I felt the sudden chill of danger_

_Something told me keep on walking_

_Told me I should not have come there_

Cormac spun Hermione around to face him and then pointed above them. Miseltoe. She barely had time to register this before his mouth was on hers. He parted his lips and pushed his tongue into Hermione's mouth. It tasted like liquor and dragon tartare and she realized it would do Bella a horrible disservice to continue pretending this was her. She tried to kiss him back, tried to make it mean something, but she felt nothing on her side but revulsion, disgust, and boredom.

_What would Bellatrix think if she could see her now? Would she still think she was better than all of them? _

_She said reality is a knife_

_When there's no love in your life_

_And merciful is the night_

_When you just can't stop this feeling_

_It's torture_

_It's torture_

_It's torture_

Hermione looked to check on Luna when she finally broke away to come up for air, but the blonde was nowhere to be seen.

_And I still can't find the meaning, no no no_

_Of the face I keep on seeing_

_Was she real or am I dreaming_

_Did the sound of your name_

_Turn a wheel, start the flame in me_

The band started up a slower song next--some take on an old fashioned Christmas carol, and Hermione took that as her cue to disentangle herself from Cormac.

"I'll get us more drinks," she said before he could open his mouth and then she pushed into the pink smoke and party guests, intent on losing herself, until she heard--

"Hermione! Hermione!"

"Harry! There you are, thank goodness! Hi again, Luna!" Hermione greeted her best friend, looking sharp in his bottle-green dress robes next to a table of hors d'oeuvres. Luna was beside him, looking a little glassy-eyed and drunk, and altogether not like herself.

"What's happened to you?" asked Harry, and Hermione became conscious of her own disheveled appearance. She felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment and caught what she thought might be an unusually bemused smirk from Luna.

"Oh, I've just escaped — I mean, I've just left Cormac," Hermione said. "Under the mistletoe," she added in explanation, as Harry continued to look questioningly at her.

"Serves you right for coming with him," he told her severely, but Hermione didn't have the time or patience for his lecture, for she'd just seen Cormac's tall frame coming towards them.

"Oh, Merlin! He's coming this way!" she hissed, and seizing Harry and Luna's hands, she drug them to the other side of the room. They grabbed goblets of mead off a sparkling gold table, only to realize a little too late that Professor Trelawney was standing there alone. But Hermione would take the crazy divination fraud over Cormac anyday. Her date made Hagrid's Giant brother Grawp look like a gentleman.

"Ah, Miss Lovegood," said Professor Trelawney, seeming to only notice Luna at first.

"Oh, hello," Luna replied politely, but with a strange edge to her voice as she sipped her mead.

"I haven't seen you in my classes lately. . . ." the divination teacher trailed off, and Hermione could smell cooking sherry. Luna didn't answer, and even looked a little like she didn't understand the question.

"You've got Firenze this year, don't you Luna?" Hermione prompted, and the blonde came back down from space, nodding along and disappearing behind her goblet of mead again.

"Oh, of course," said Professor Trelawney with an angry, drunken titter. "Or Dobbin, as I prefer to think of him. You would have thought, would you not, that now I am returned to the school, Professor Dumbledore might have got rid of the horse? But no . . . we share classes. . . . It's an insult, frankly, an insult. Do you know . . ."

Under cover of Trelawney's furious criticisms of Firenze, Hermione drew closer to Harry and said, "Is Luna quite...alright?"

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Is she ever?"

Hermione rolled her eyes impatiently. "No, I mean, she's not acting as strange as she normally does and maybe that's what's odd…she's just…"

"Drunk?" Harry offered.

"Well, yes. And that's not like Luna."

"Harry Potter!" said Professor Trelawney suddenly in a deep, mystical tone, like she'd only just noticed him. "My dear boy! The rumors! The stories! 'The Chosen One'! Of course, I have known for a very long time. . . . The omens were never good, Harry. . . . But why have you not returned to Divination? For you, of all people, the subject is of the utmost importance!"

Harry opened his mouth as if to reply, but was spared the trouble of answering by something almost guaranteed to raise almost everyone's spirits: Draco Malfoy being dragged by the ear into the room by Filch.

Filch, nearly bouncing up and down with excitement at having caught someone misbehaving, shouted to Professor Slughorn that he'd caught Malfoy up after hours out in the corridors and that Malfoy had said he'd been invited to the Christmas party, but was late in setting out.

Malfoy pulled himself free of Filch's grip, looking furious. "All right, I wasn't invited!" he said angrily. "I was trying to gatecrash, happy?"

"No, I'm not! You're in trouble, you are! Didn't the headmaster say that nighttime prowling's out, unless you've got permission, didn't he, eh?"

"That's all right, Argus, that's all right," said Slughorn, waving a hand. "It's Christmas, and it's not a crime to want to come to a party. Just this once, we'll forget any punishment; you may stay, Draco."

Harry was whispering frustratedly to Hermione almost instantly, looking even more disappointed than Filch at the outcome, were that even possible. "He gets to stay, so why does he look so bloody pissed off?"

"How should I know? Besides, who cares?"

"And didn't you think he looked a bit ill? And now Snape's gone off to have a talk with him--I've got the Invisibility Cloak with me, if I could just hear what they're saying--"Harry hammered on, but he stopped to glance in Luna's direction, as if he was unsure if he should leave the drunk witch or not. Rolling her eyes for maybe the thirtieth time that night, Hermione waved him on.

"You go on, I'll take her back to her common room. I'd rather that than have to go back to Cormac anyway," she said, slipping an arm around Luna's shoulders. Harry nodded appreciatively and disappeared into the crowd after Draco and Snape.

"Alright Luna, are you ready to head upstairs, then?"

"What about your boytoy? Wouldn't want to forget him…" Luna pulled away from Hermione and sneered in a manner uncharacteristic of her, yet reminiscent of..._No…_

"Luna, I need you to come with me right now." She grabbed the Ravenclaw girl's hand and tugged her through the throng of party guests congregated by the door to Slughorn's office and out into the corridor. Away from the music, colored lights, and hazy, sweet-scented smoke, she felt like she could think clearly for the first time all night, yet that didn't make her any less confused by this stranger-than-usual version of Luna Lovegood stumbling after her now.

"_Accio potion_," she hissed, drawing her wand and pointing it at Luna, who grinned mischievously even as the corked bottle flew from her chest, where it had been tucked into her own cleavage, and into Hermione's outstretched hand. She knew without even having to open it what it was, but she still couldn't believe it.

"You...I can't believe you...how _dare_ you…"

"Guess my absinthe tolerance isn't what it once was," 'Luna' shrugged, and turned to walk on ahead of Hermione. "Are you sure it's the Ravenclaw Common Room you want to take me back to?"

Hermione still stood rooted to the place she was standing, with the vial of Polyjuice Potion clutched tightly in her hand, and feeling quite unable to speak through all the different emotions coursing through her. It didn't seem possible...and yet...it all clicked into place. The drinking. The dancing. The outfit. Her confusion at Professor Trelawney's question and comments about Firenze. Hermione felt a muddled mix of volatile anger, confusion, and lingering disbelief...yet, she was also more than a little impressed and, in some part of her mind, strangely...satisfied...that if she had to make out with Cormac, at least the older witch had seen it. Hermione didn't quite know -why- this satisfied her, but it brought to her the same feeling as announcing her date to the party in front of Ron and Lavender had.

"How did..._How_?"

"Slipping it into my drinks all night, of course," the other witch shrugged, stumbly slightly. "But now you've taken it away, I can't quite recall the last time I had a few drops...well, on your own head be it, to be caught out here with me."

"_On my head?!_ But--where...how did you..._why?!?_ And what the _hell_ were you thinking?!?"

They reached the Grand Staircase. Fortunately, Slughorn's office was on the Sixth floor and not down in the dungeons where his classroom was. This meant Hermione only had to guide "Luna" up a single flight of stairs to get her back to the Room of Requirment where she belonged. Hermione couldn't believe she hadn't caught on earlier. The way she moved, the way her hips--even in Luna's form--swiveled from side to side like the body of a snake--the way she laughed and smirked and spoke--it was all so frustratingly _her. _

"You act like it's the first time."

"What do you mea--"

"This is only the first time I've been caught," she said with an annoyingly irresistible wink, as she hiccuped and tripped again in her heels. Hermione caught her by the wrist before she fell on the hard stone of the staircase, then helped her up the rest of the way, intoning under her breath, "_you complete idiot, you daft dimbo, you--" _

And then, as they got off the staircase at the seventh floor landing, it hit her. "What do you mean this is only the first time you haven't been caught?"

"Let's put it this way, our friend Miss Lovegood has a lot of Polyjuice Potion, you know, in case one of those conspiracy theories of her father's comes to fruition and she needs to make a quick getaway...and she knows I've not exactly taken to being cooped up--it has been interesting attending classes here and there, going to Hogsmeade, of course…was good to see it again while conscious and uninjured..."the older witch trailed off, cackling in drunken laughter that sounded offputting coming from Luna's form and reminded Hermione darkly of the Bellatrix Lestrange she'd met in the Ministry of Magic only a year prior.

_"Itty bitty baby! Do you want to play?" _

Hermione shuddered at the memory, as the two of them rounded the corridor that led to the Room of Requirement.

"Wait a moment. What do you mean you were in Hogsmeade?" she gasped more loudly than she'd intended as further realizations dawned on her.

"You don't really think Luna Lovegood had any interest in having me teach her about makeup, do you?"


End file.
